November 2020

From cracking jokes to drawing champs

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Still no word on when Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG might launch

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Upstart publisher Ziggurat Interactive will release enhanced editions of the first two BloodRayne games to Steam and GOG on November 20. Dubbed the Terminal Cuts, these definitive editions of the beloved action series boast new graphical and performance spit shines to get them up to speed for a modern era.  

The improved versions of BloodRayne 1 and BloodRayne 2 support higher resolutions up to 4K and feature upscaled cinematics, improved lighting and rendering, and modern controller support. Both games will be sold separately though the price is unknown at this time. 

Friday the 13th: The Game hasn't had the easiest road following a bumpy launch but despite that, the community has grown with a heartfelt attachment to the horror franchise adaptation. That being said, all good things must come to an end and a new blog post from the dev team details what that means for the future of the title. 

In the most recent blog post, the team detailed that the dedicated servers will be shutting down here soon. That being said, quick play lobbies will remain open, despite this change, as will private matches. The servers attached to player progression and in-game items will also remain active.

Dedicated Servers for Friday the 13th: The Game will be decommissioned in the upcoming patch, set to roll out this month, November 2020. What this means is that the game will revert back to peer to peer matchmaking for Quick Play lobbies. The Database Servers, however, will stay active and continue to house all player progression and unlocks, so users can continue to play Friday the 13th: The Game via peer to peer Quick Play and Private Matches.

The upcoming patch planned for November will be the final update for Friday the 13th: The Game. This patch will include a ton of fixes for in-game bugs that players have been reporting recently, all of which will be detailed in the notes for the update a week before it launches.

After so splendidly reviving the real-time tactical squad series, Desperados 3 is now just showing off with its own new take on an old location. The third and final DLC of its season pass is out today, Part 3: Once More With Feeling, and it’s returning to the Eagle’s Nest – a vast bandit fortress from previous games. The base game and its DLCs have hearty discounts for a few days, too. Get a peek at the task ahead in the new trailer below.

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Watch Dogs Legion

is one of this year’s big [cms-block], utilising ray traced reflections to bring the wet, rainy streets of London to life. It’s also one of the growing number of games to support Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS tech – and based on my initial testing of the game’s ray tracing effects on PC, you’re definitely going to need it if you want to admire the UK’s dystopian capital in all its reflective glory, even if you managed to bag yourself one of Nvidia’s newly-released [cms-block] cards.

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It must be easy to run a country when you’ve only two dimensions to work with. This week, Kingdom (that’s Kingdom: Classic and not Kingdom: New Lands or Kingdom: Two Crowns) became free to download and keep over on the Humble Store. The old king may seem stripped down compared to its successors, but it’ll let you dole out pennies across your lands without dropping real-world coin ’til this time next Monday.

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I recently talked to a group of people who were unfamiliar with games, about what games are. It’s always a bit weird doing that, because the answer is often “I mean, IDK. What are ‘sports’? Now please don’t ask me if they’re art.” See also: when is a door not a door?

As ever, though, weird indie games provide the answer to most questions, if you look hard enough. In this case, I’m talking about Menu New Game+, available to fiddle with for free on Itch.io. When is a game not a game? When it’s a series of start menus for games that don’t even exist! Ha! Take that, films, you can never be as much art as that because you’re not interactive and therefore can never be quite as meta.

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Since Starfield was first announced, Bethesda have been pretty quiet on the details. The upcoming spacefaring RPG was revealed at E3 back in 2018 as their new next-gen singleplayer game. But now, Todd Howard has shared a few more titbits. For starters, Starfield’s map will be the largest of any Bethesda RPG yet thanks to procedural generation.

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Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe SSD | $130 | Amazon

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I love listening to podcasts while I drive because I am sick in the head, so naturally I do the same thing when driving around in Watch Dogs Legion. Unfortunately, I spent my first few hours cruising the game’s London in a stolen hatchback while the same podcast reset over and over every time I got out of the car to…

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In late October, the New York Times podcast The Daily gathered a group of women from the Ohio suburbs to explain in their own words why they’d soured on Donald Trump. The ambiance seemed cozy. Huddled around a fire pit in a presumably ample backyard—draped in blankets, sipping on red wine—the women told a story that…

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While doomscrolling through Twitter the past few days, I noticed a lot of people making the same Majora’s Mask joke. Today does feel like the Final Day, doesn’t it? Either the moon will crash into the Earth, or the clock will reset and Americans will have another chance to maybe get it right this time. Problem is, we…

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The Romancing SaGa and Saga Prefecture collaboration has returned with special utility hole covers.

The post Romancing SaGa x Saga Prefecture Collaboration Returns With Special Utility Hole Covers for 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.

Both Richard Ian Cox and David Kaye will return in Yashahime as Inuyasha and Sesshomaru, respectively.

The post Yashahime’s Inuyasha and Sesshomaru Will Be Voiced by the Original English Dub’s Actor appeared first on Siliconera.

Get ready for the future of Fire Emblem and a new Special Heroes banner with a November 3, 2020 Feh Channel.

The post Fire Emblem Heroes Feh Channel Will Appear Tonight appeared first on Siliconera.

Shopping from Amazon this month? Your orders might be shipped in Super Mario Bros boxes.

The post Super Mario Bros Boxes Will Be Used for (Some) Amazon Shipments appeared first on Siliconera.

Time to meet another bug buddy from Monster Hunter Rise. This time, it's the healing Escurego, which you'll find in the field.

The post Meet the Monster Hunter Rise Escurego appeared first on Siliconera.

Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia tries to make Bakugan a creature-collector on par with Pokemon and Yo-kai Watch, but it's a bit of a drag.

The post Review: Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia Only Earns ‘Honorable Mention’ appeared first on Siliconera.

Now that physical rewards are returning to My Nintendo, there's an actual reason to use the service again regularly.

The thing is, if you've been neglecting it for a while, you might be logging into zero Platinum Points, which doesn't really help you pick up 600+-cost rewards. We've shown you a few easy ways to earn points over the past few years, but there's one fairly innocuous mission that a lot of people are probably ignoring right now: the legacy system mission.

While we have no idea when Nintendo will actually realize that this mission exists and turn it off, for now, it's ready to claim every week. All you need to do is log into the Nintendo eShop on a Wii U or 3DS with the same My Nintendo-linked account, and you'll earn 30 Platinum Points per week. 

That's literally all you need to do. Just sign in for a few seconds and you can earn 120 easy Platinum Points per month in addition to whatever else you're bringing in. My Wii U is still hooked up and I keep my 3DS fully charged on a dock near my bed (with a docked Vita!): so this is super easy for me to remember.

It's not every day I get to write about the Wii U and the 3DS. If there isn't a reason to, I'll invent one!

Missions [My Nintendo]

This all feels so familiar. I've been here before but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe if I look around a bit --really focus and think hard and try to shake the cobwebs off my brain -- it'll all come rushing back.

Oh yeah, I've seen this before just by a different name. First it was Max. Then Chloe. Then the Diaz brothers. I'm playing a Life is Strange game, but with a pulpier feel and less import given to teenage relationships. There's no mistaking the Dontnod DNA though.

Koji Igarashi's spooky platform adventure Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is set to get some new content this month. Joining the beautiful Creatures of the Night that make up the game's roster of playable characters will be the parasol-spinning vampire, Bloodless.

Encountered by protagonist Miriam in the Dian Cecht Cathedral, the beautiful but terrifying Bloodless is found soaking in a bathtub of claret-colored liquid - which I'm willing to bet ain't Cran-Apple. Bloodless' offense mostly consists of streams of the red stuff, with which she has deft control over. Also to hand is Bloodless trusty parasol, which itself is a deadly weapon in the dark one's hands.

While Team IGA did not offer any specific information as to when Bloodless will grace us with her presence, the developer noted that she would arrive in November, with more details arriving in the coming days. It's great to see Bloodstained still receiving fun new content well over a year after launch, giving fans another reason to take a fresh wander through the halls of The Hellhold once again.

Square Enix is at it again with their Asia-exclusive physical Switch carts!

This time the beloved Final Fantasy IX is being immortalized in physical form once again; which is just as well since this game should never be subject to legacy systems and digital storefronts that will eventually die out. Instead, it will live on with Switch beyond the confines of the eShop, but only in certain regions.

Square Enix Asia's Facebook account has confirmed that the physical edition of IX will arrive on November 27, which will allow for English language support (on top of French, Italian, German, and Spanish). Note that this release is region-free, so if you're keen on importing it for $49.99 (plus fees), you can play it on your western Switch. This version will retain the booster system as well as the "high speed" and "no encounters" toggles that were born out of the Final Fantasy VII PC release and beyond.

So yeah, as long as you can read one of those languages, you're good on importing this one and enjoying it forever. Just remember to charge your Switch battery regularly in the decades to come!

Square Enix Asia [Facebook via Nintendo Soup]

If you've been excitedly anticipating the previously revealed remasters of developer Terminal Reality's so-so (but still, seemingly, fondly remembered) BloodRayne series, you're in luck; enhanced editions of BloodRayne 1 and 2 will be making their way to PC on 20th November.

The original BloodRayne launched back in 2002, introducing the world to half-vampire (and clothing deficient) femme fatale Rayne, as she embarked on a campy, globe-trotting adventure - very much in the third-person shooter mould - to obliterate supernatural forces. And also nazis.

A similarly styled sequel followed in 2004, and the series was revived in 2011, albeit this time as a side-scrolling action platformer, known as BloodRayne Betrayal. Uwe Boll also turned the games into a trilogy of "movies", but the less said about those the better.

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Following the conclusion of the Rulebreakers event, the next FIFA 21 promo is already being teased before it begins on Friday. It is another returning promo, called Road to the Final, and it celebrates the start of the Champions League now that the Group Stages are a few weeks in.

Exactly how it works is yet to be confirmed, but it’ll likely be the same as it was last year. How it worked was the player would get an upgrade (following the usual system) for every round they progressed through.

As an example, an 86 rated player would get a plus one if they qualified from their group, and another one for getting into each one of the knockout stages. Therefore, if a player’s club reaches and wins the final, whether they play in it or not, they have the potential to reach 94 rated or higher.

As for who the players will be, it’s difficult to say. The only requirement is that they play for a team who’s in the Champions League or Europa League.

EA Sports tends to opt for cards that fit into the meta, so that players are more likely to open packs to try and get them, so expect to see some familiar faces.

If you’ve been coming up against a player a lot of times over the first few weeks of FIFA 21, don’t be shocked to see them included in the Road to the Final squad on Friday.

Over the next three days, before the promo begins, expect to see EA Sports continue to tease the players via Twitter and the in-game Ultimate Team loading screen.

Once the Road to the Final players are revealed, we’ll be sure to let you know who they are.

Today Aerosoft released a trailer of an upcoming add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator focusing on the East Frisian Islands in Germany.

If you’re not familiar with the area, they’re a chain of islands in the North Sea along the coast of Germany and close to Denmark.

The package, developed by Stairport, will include not just the airfields in the islands, but will also overhaul the towns and villages with correct landmarks like lighthouses, beacons, restaurants, harbor buildings, and more.

Of course, there will be plenty of real estate to take-off and land including the following airfields.

• Borkum EDWR
• Juist EDWJ
• Norderney EDWY
• Baltrum EDWZ
• Langeoog EDWL
• Wangerooge EDWG

You can enjoy the trailer below.

Brazil is notoriously affected by extremely high prices for consoles, and the PS5 isn’t an exception. Luckily, Sony has decided to help a little.

Today the house of PlayStation has announced a price cut for the upcoming console and some of its accessories on the local PlayStation Blog (via Restera).

The PS5 Digital Edition has been reduced from R $ 4,499 to R $ 4,199. The version with the Blu Ray disk will cost R $ 4,699 instead of R $ 4,999.

The DualSense controller drops from R $ 499 to R $ 469 and the camera from R $ 449 to R $ 419.

Do keep in mind that this still translates into US$730 for the entry-level diskless version, so it isn’t exactly cheap regardless of the price cut.

This is due to recent tax cuts announced by the local government and also affected the price of Xbox Series X and S, which were dropped last week.

In other markets, the PS5’s standard edition will cost $499.99, €499.99, £449.99, or 49,980 yen while the Digital Edition is priced at $399.99, €399.99, £359.99, or 39,980 yen.

The first release date for the console will be on Nov. 12 in the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.

Everyone else will have to wait a little more: the console will launch in Europe and in the rest of the world on Nov. 19.

Incidentally, Sony recently announced that it plans to ship more than 7.6 million units by the end of March 2021, beating the PS4’s debut shipments.

One of the best aspects of Genshin Impact is certainly its soundtrack, and today MiHoYo had a nice bonus for the fans.

The developer released a massive soundtrack for free on YouTube, allowing fans of the popular action-RPG to sample 63 tracks for about two hours of music.

You can listen to them all below.

Keep your dough

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The essential guide to the films that turn J-pop singers into warring gang members

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Days Gone is getting some pretty decent upgrades for the PlayStation 5. Sony's Bend Studio published a tweet that detailed the enhancements: 60 fps, dynamic 4K resolution, and current-gen to next-gen save transfers. So, if you've completed Days Gone and are looking for a reason to hop into its new game plus mode, if you started the game and never completed it, or if you still have yet to experience the apocalyptic life and times of Deacon St. John, you'll be able to do all of that and more when the PlayStation 5 launches on November 12. You can see the tweet below.

If you're taking a ride on the Broken Road for the first time, or finishing up NG+, here's what you can expect when you boot up #DaysGone on the #PS5:

📺 Up to 60FPS w/ Dynamic 4K
💾 Save Transfers from PS4 to PS5 pic.twitter.com/qP2ugQO4hc

While not quite as explosive as Fortnite was at launch, Respawn Entertainment's Apex Legends battle royale experience is an incredible addition to the popular genre. With rotating events and new seasonal content, players have been having a grand 'ol time trying to snatch up that Victory Royale. For those that are digging the online shooter, there is good news: already up to 12 seasons are completely planned out and it looks like the studio is looking to expand beyond battle royale for Apex's future. 

Apex Legends director Chad Grenier recently sat down with the folks over at Eurogamer to talk about the future of the hit online game. Grenier revealed that the latest season is just one of many more to come and that the team has content planned out "all the way up to season 12" and beyond. Following  season 8's reveal, Grenier mentioned that this time marker will be the pivot to continue work on seasons 13 and 14. From there is anyone's guess. 

Ubisoft has quite a few games currently in development, among them is another adaptation of James Cameron's Avatar film. Led by The Division developers over at Massive Entertainment, news of the delay came by way of a recent earnings call. It was there that the company revealed that the reason behind the upcoming Avatar game's delay was to ensure its launch is in line with the Avatar 2 movie coming out in 2022. 

Avatar is the latest game under the Ubisoft umbrella to see a pushback, alongside Rainbow Six Quarantine and Far Cry 6. While many games are being pushed back to either steer clear of Cyberpunk 2077's window or because of COVID-19, this decision was made with the launch of the movie in mind. 

First announced back in 2017, the upcoming Avatar game is a work in progress with the Massive Entertainment team, the same studio that did The Division, alongside Lightsorm Entertainment, which is James Cameron's studio, and Fox Interactive. 

Three years after its premiere, grindhouse 1v7 teen-smasher Friday The 13th: The Game has finally been defeated. This month, Gun Media are shutting down the multiplayer stab ’em up’s dedicated servers for good. But like any good movie monster, the game isn’t quite gone for good, and will shamble along for the foreseeable future through peer-to-peer matchmaking.

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Among Us

has had a bit of a hacking problem since its sudden explosion in popularity. Fortunately, developers Innersloth are on the case. While today’s update is a small one adding just a few small fixes and features, the patch notes have revealed plans to bring an accounts system into the game by the end of the year, along with a new map that’s set to be the game’s biggest yet.

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Giving money to streamers can be weird. It makes sense when a streamer is a scrappy up-and-comer for whom even a few coins in the cup can make a difference, but we live in an era in which big streamers are millionaires with exclusive contracts and brand deals. While popular streamers have expressed awareness of this…

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