January 2021

Making haters into fans, one boon at a time

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Arr, it be a pirate’s life for me (and three friends)

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Build up both your skill and your CAMP

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Sure, he may have a job in New Horizons, but we can’t see him!

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Rocket League is teaming up with the NFL to celebrate Super Bowl LV, which will take place on Sunday, Feb. 7. The event will add a new game mode called Gridiron, event challenges, and the return of the NFL Fan Pack.

In the Gridiron game mode, the map Champions Field will be transformed to look more like a football field with hash marks and the NFL logo.

It’s a 4-on-4 mode where the ball is replaced with an American football instead of Rocket League’s “soccar” ball. The football will attach to a car’s roof when touched, and other players can grab the ball by running into it and attaching it to their own roof.

This allows for the ball to be stolen by the opposing team or handed off to a teammate.

While holding the ball, the player can single jump, but double jumping causes the ball to be released from their roof.

As for scoring, 7 points are awarded if the ball is attached to a player when entering the opponent’s goal, and 3 points are awarded if the ball is passed in or if the ball is loose.

Finally, unlike in other Rocket League modes, you’ll fumble the ball if you drive out of bounds past the marked lines on the arena’s wall.

During the event, you’ll have the chance to score points towards unlocking the Gridiron Guru player title, NFL Wheels, and 20,000 XP.

The Rocket League Super Bowl LV event will begin on Feb. 2 and will last until Feb. 8. You can read more about it on the official website.

You also still have time to participate in Rocket League’s X Games event; you can read all about that here.

Good things are coming for fans of classic propeller airliners in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Two third-party add-on developers have shared new screenshots of their upcoming aircraft.

We start with Aeroplane Heaven that followed up on its impressive look at the Douglas DC-3’s exterior with screenshots of the super-detailed flight deck (on top of one more of the exterior).

After a brief change to the name "MarioRabbids," the "RabbidsOfficial" Twitter account returned to its original name.

The post Rabbids Twitter Account Temporarily Changed to ‘MarioRabbids’ appeared first on Siliconera.

Olija is a game where yeah, some bosses might seem tough, but the game is constantly giving you hints about what your enemies will do.

The post Olija’s Combat Demands Your Attention appeared first on Siliconera.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination - the Rebellion-developed sequel to Elixir Studios' cult-classic management sim - finally has a release date, and will be donning monocle and cackling maniacally from 30th March on PC.

As you'd expect, Evil Genius 2 follows a similar formula to its 2004 predecessor, tasking players with managing the day-to-day operations of an evil lair and helping their international super villain of choice achieve global domination.

The bulk of the ensuing action is focussed on base building and defense, as players carve out an underground lair suitable for their villainous needs, boss around minions, and attempt to stave off attack from do-gooders determined to thwart their evil schemes.

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Ninja Theory has opted to focus its development efforts on its other projects like Senua's Saga, Project Mara, and the Insight Project. ...

By defining what makes a strategy game valuable, I explore how random outcomes contribute to strategic thinking and help us grow our creativity, problem solving abilities and connection to others. ...

Lara Croft Go dev Antoine Routon describes how he and his team tried to recreate what they remember it feeling like to play the earliest Tomb Raider games, rather than the games themselves. ...

Publisher Reef Entertainment has quietly announced that the PS5 upgrade for its 2019 release Terminator: Resistance will miss its March 26 release date by a little over one month. The first-person RPG will now launch on the premier PlayStation platform on April 30.

Terminator: Resistance Enhanced will feature Teyon's original adventure with newly-upscaled 4K visuals running at 60 frames-per-second. Additional tech boosts will be applied to Terminator Resistance's loading times, as well as its in-game textures, light and shadow dynamics, polygon count, tessellation, and anti-aliasing, making Future War Los Angeles more dystopian and miserable than ever before.

Also arriving in this release is an all-new Infiltrator Mode, which will allow players to occupy the death metal chassis of a T-800 infiltration unit, striking back at hero Jacob Rivers and his meager but determined forces fighting to overthrow the dominance of Skynet. Later in 2021, a paid DLC expansion will add new narrative content to the campaign.

While Terminator: Resistance is far from a shining example of licensed games, Teyon's dedication to supporting its product is commendable, and might be enough of a reason for me to give the so-so shooter another pass when the upgrade and DLC content hit the market. I guess I'll be back after all.

Player footage from the Resident Evil Re:Verse beta hasn't swayed me one way or the other – I still think this multiplayer pack-in looks like a silly fling – but it's nice to know that you can change the graphics. If you weren't a fan of the exaggerated art style in the reveal trailer, you can turn off the comic filter.

Here's some beta footage of the Re:Verse tutorial with the filter on:

And here's a deathmatch with the filter turned off:

As a survivor like Leon, you can shoot, dodge, and roundhouse kick other players, who will then morph into a bioweapon when they die. The more virus capsules a player is holding onto, the more powerful a beast they'll become – until they're taken out, at which point they will respawn elsewhere as a human. The beta doesn't cover progression hooks or other elements, but it paints enough of a picture for now.

If you're in any way invested in this stuff, the ResidentEvil subreddit has a recap of the six survivors, their weapons, and their abilities. Hunk can go invisible and Claire is packing Quickdraw Army.

It's been...a year! Well, it's been...a hard nine months or so, but it's felt like a full year.

And in that time, I've forgotten about a lot of games that were sort of vaguely coming in 2021, or were pushed further away into limbo. That includes the upcoming Magic: The Gathering themed dungeon crawling action romp Magic: Legends!

Lo and behold though, Perfect World Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast are here to remind us that it is indeed a thing, and will start becoming an actual thing you can play pretty soon. On March 23 the PC open beta will begin, at which point everyone can give it a go; following a previous series of closed alpha tests.

As a reminder it's described as a "free-to-play persistent world" game, which is still dungeon-crawler framed but also has elements of the card game, like "decks" that can be used to influence your spell/ability choices. You can get a good quick look at that idea below.

Eventually, this thing will hit the PS4 and Xbox One platforms as well.

With the way things are looking for Marvel's Avengers, we're long overdue a check-in with Crystal Dynamics. The next War Table video – a status update on the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions of Avengers, to say nothing of Clint's story Future Imperfect – is scheduled for February 16, 2021.

Get a glimpse of the future with our WAR TABLE Deep Dive: Hawkeye, premiering on February 16!

We'll be showing:
🏹 Marvel's Avengers Operation: Hawkeye - Future Imperfect
⏭️ PS5 & Xbox Series X|S

Like our previous Deep Dive, this will be directly uploaded and not livestreamed. pic.twitter.com/3aD2H5ST1T

— Marvel's Avengers (@PlayAvengers) January 28, 2021

It's safe to say the post-launch rollout hasn't gone to plan – and that's understandable, to a point; 2020 was rough – but the rate at which content is coming in feels like a crawl, even for the most patient fans.

These content delays are made significantly worse when you think about what we're getting (first Kate, then Clint) compared to what we could've gotten instead (any number of other, higher-profile fan-favorite characters, locations, and scenarios). It feels like Avengers' live-service woes have snowballed out of control. People had fun with the game around launch, but now, the timing's all out of whack.

Announced via Roger Craig Smith’s Twitter earlier today, the prolific voice actor’s 10-year-run as the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog has come to an end. A Sega rep tells Kotaku the company will “always be thankful to Roger for his contribution to the franchise.”

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After a wild ride that took it off the tracks and onto the goddamn Rainbow Road from Mario Kart, the GameStop stock train appears to finally be pulling back into the station. People are blaming market manipulation from stock trading apps like Robinhood for this, but they’re also lumping in a name day traders might be…

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Thursday’s Best Deals | Kinja Deals

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Magic: The Gathering Arena, the online multiplayer version of the popular trading-card game, launched today in early access for select Android devices via Google Play, with an iOS version due out later this year. Playing involves some squinting, but now it’s even harder to put down.

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Outriders

• Delayed from February 2 to April 1, 2021

Developer People Can Fly announced the delay in early January, saying, “We have decided to move the release date of Outriders to April 1st 2021 (no joke!). We will spend this extra time fine tuning the game and focusing on delivering a fantastic play experience at launch.”

This is Outriders’ second delay; it was previously pushed from Holiday 2020 to February 2021.

Dragon Quest Tact is a free-to-play tactical RPG that just launched on Android & iOS. Battle, collect, and then train up classic monsters from the Dragon Quest series. If you're a fan of the series, be sure to watch this episode of New Gameplay Today, wherein Jeff Cork, Dan Tack, and I play through the first boss fight in Dragon Quest Tact. King Slimes, Great Sabrecats, and more - all of your favorite monsters are in Dragon Quest Tact.

If you enjoyed this early glimpse at the latest Dragon Quest mobile game, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch previous episodes of New Gameplay Today. 

Earlier this year, the United States swore in a new president to take the helm over the next four years with Joesph Biden Jr. but the real star of the 46th inauguration was Bernie Sanders huddled in the stands with an admittedly adorable pair of mittens on to battle the cold. The image of Sanders in his full winter gear went viral, becoming a meme that was seen everywhere, and now that same inauguration meme is invading the world of SoulCalibur VI with this Bernie mod. 

This hilarious and wildly random mod was spotted by the folks over at Game Rant and as a huge fan of modding (as seen with our ongoing Mod Corner series), I couldn't pass up the chance to share this weirdly perfect mashup. 

Why go through the motions of creating your own Bernie Sanders in the fighting game's character creator when you can just mod him in instead? Modder 'User619' did just that by recreating the mittenfied politician-turned-meme and placing him front and center in the world of SoulCalibur VI. 

Deckbuilding is a big part of Magic: Legends

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Sports? In MY video game?

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Earwig and the Witch brings the Spirited Away studio into the 3D era

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Fullbright’s new game to be released in 2021

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The 0.6.0 update is now available for all Grounded players and brings new bugs, bug-related items, and bug fixes to Obsidian Entertainment’s tiny survival game.

The update adds three new flying creatures following the bird last year with bees, fireflies, and mosquitos. These bugs drop materials when killed that can create weapons and other items like the three-piece Bee Armor Set, Firefly Head Lamp, Stinger Spear, Mosquito Needle, Weevil Shield, and consumable healing item Healbasa.

Players will also receive a new perk called Barbarian which increases club damage, though the update has slightly decreased the durability of bone weapons.

Quality of life features included in the patch are equipped items no longer take up space in the backpack, and players will be able to keep their equipped items after death. Each equipped item will receive a small amount of damage to durability after death.

The update also includes other slight fixes such as “Gnats will get happy after boops more consistently” and “Aphids will now face the correct direction when descending grass blades.” Check out the full list of fixes in the official patch notes.

Grounded is now available in Steam Early Access on PC and the Xbox Preview Program across Windows 10 PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

Azur Lane publisher Yostar is continuing to deliver a look at upcoming content for the popular shipgirl-focused mobile game.

First of all, we get to see HMS Penelope, a new elite Arethusa-class light cruiser.

On top of that, the celebrations of the Chinese New Year are approaching, which means themed skins.

The game is developed in China after all, so the local Holiday is certainly a rather big deal in Azur Lane.

We’re getting a new batch of Quipao/Cheongsam skins featuring Saint Louis, Kirishima, La Galissonnière, Noshiro, Glowworm, Z46, and Bremerton.

You can check them out below.

Valve has announced the return of its increasingly regular Steam Game Festival next week, bringing with it 500 playable demos, developer livestreams, and more.

This fifth outing for Valve's indie-focussed Game Festival event is scheduled to begin Wednesday, 3rd February, at 6pm in the UK (that's 10am PT), and the festivities cease one week later, on Tuesday, 9th February, at the same time.

With 500 playable demos available for the duration of the event, it's a wonderful, if rather intimidating, proposition for those that like to dig around in search of undiscovered gems. And Valve has notably avoided using the words "limited-time" on its Game Festival promo page this time around, so I'm hoping most of these demos will be sticking around after the event to give people a fighting change of working through the most intriguing ones.

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If you've found yourself curious about Ubisoft's Greek Mythology inspired open-world adventure Immortals: Fenyx Rising, but not quite curious enough to actually do a buy, you might be interested to know a demo's just released on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, Stadia, and PC.

Those that download the demo can sample Fenyx Rising's vibrant mix of combat, puzzling, and open-world exploration as part of a quest to uncover the secret of the cyclops across an archipelago built specifically for the occasion.

You might find you're enamoured enough to seek out the full game, although Eurogamer's Christian Donlan wasn't entirely convinced by the experience when he reviewed it last year. It's enjoyable enough on a moment-by-moment basis, he reckoned, but never quite establishes enough of its own personality to rise above Ubisoft's overly familiar design.

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It might not be the meaningful story shakeup that some players are waiting for, but I'm ready to revisit Grounded with update 0.6.0 – it adds a few aerial attention-grabbers like bees, mosquitoes, and fireflies, as well as what I'd call an essential quality-of-life change to backpack inventory management.

(The way the dead bee's body rolls away from its head at 2:33 is wonderfully unsettling.)

The change that'll have a positive ripple effect: your equipped items won't take up space in your backpack, and when you die, you won't lose them. Instead, your equipped gear will take a "small" durability hit. It's a fair trade-off between providing tension (this is a survival game) and ease of use.

This update also includes gear to go along with the flying menace – you can craft Bee Armor, a Firefly Head Lamp, Stinger Spear, and Mosquito Needle, among other items – and numerous tuning changes. Another good bullet point: "Most unblockable creature attacks are now blockable with shields."

I haven't even explored the koi's domain yet, so I have a bunch of ground to cover. Wish me luck. It's a testament to this tiny-huge world that, even after a long break, I still vividly remember the landscape.

January 0.6.0 Update is Released [Obsidian]

To get ready for the biggest day in football, the NFL and Rocket League are teaming up to bring the Super Bowl LV Celebration event to Rocket League. The event will run from February 2-8 and will introduce a brand-new game mode, Event Challenges, and the return of the NFL Fan Pack.

Gridiron is the new limited-time game mode that transforms Champions Field into a football field for a four versus four match that mimics American football rules with a Rocket League twist. Instead of the regular Rocket League ball, Gridiron will have a replica of an American football which will stick to the top of your car when you touch it, rather than sticking to wherever you made contact like in Spike Rush mode.

Note: This post contains some light spoilers for Hitman 3, so read on at your own risk.

Thanks to early looks at Hitman 3, we knew its second mission included a full-on murder mystery that takes place in an English manor, nestled right in the middle of your own intentions to commit a murder. What we didn't know was just how intricate that mystery would be--or how much detail it would include about the family at the center of it all.

Though the last three Hitman games tell a tale of intrigue of their own, that story is mostly relegated to moments in between missions, providing loose reasoning to venture to each of its massive, dense locations. At Thornbridge Manor in Hitman 3, you're looking to eliminate matriarch Alexa Carlisle because she's a part of the Illuminati-like organization known as Providence. That's enough to get you through the mansion's door, but the story within it is a self-contained glimpse at Alexa and her family, and it mostly exists just to help you learn when you can get a chance to take Alexa out without being seen.

Super Mario Bros. 35's first collaborative event has ended, and it was a success. The event tasked players with cumulatively defeating 3.5 million Bowsers, and they exceeded that goal, defeating 5,363,696 Bowsers in total.

As a reward for surpassing the event goal, everyone who participated and defeated at least one Bowser during the event will receive 350 Platinum points in their My Nintendo account. These points can be redeemed for rewards on the My Nintendo website, including various physical items like the recently added Splatoon 2 Mario keychain set (although that is temporarily out of stock).

Nintendo plans to hold two more World Count Challenge events in February and March. Details about those have not been announced yet, however.

Call of Duty Warzone's notorious stim glitch has reared its head a fourth time, allowing players to cheat the system and survive in the deadly storm to come out on top. But this one is slightly different from previous iterations.

Calling what players have been experiencing this time around a glitch isn't exactly right, but the effects are basically the same: players who exploit it are able to heal infinitely while hiding in the storm, leaving them the sole survivors of a match.

If you want to pull the glitch off yourself, we won't tell you how to do it, but know that you'll need a lot of in-game currency to do it. Rather than an actual glitch, this method relies on exploiting loopholes in legal gameplay mechanics by finding ways to rapidly complete Contracts and earn a ton of in-game cash to spend on Munitions Boxes. This isn't a clearly defined coding flaw, so it's not like the past versions of the stim glitch we've seen before, which relied on portions of the game's code that could be exploited.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will host a live stream on Twitch tonight to discuss the latest news about GameStop's stock price and marketplace volatility in general. The ongoing financial fiasco between Reddit's r/wallstreetbets community and hedge funds has cost billions of dollars for GameStop short-sellers, according to recent reports. The White House is now monitoring the situation, prompting statements from politicians like Elizabeth Warren and now Ocasio-Cortez. The Congresswoman's live stream is scheduled to start in about an hour, at 5:30 PM PT / 8:30 PM ET. Tune in to hear AOC's thoughts on GameStop, retail trading, and more, possibly with "a guest or two."

Here's where and how you can tune in to AOC's upcoming stream.

Watch AOC Discuss GameStop, More On Twitch

You'll be able to watch AOC's stream on this week's events involving GameStop and stock trading service Robinhood tonight at 5:30 PM PT / 8:30 PM ET on the Congresswoman's Twitch channel, embedded below.

One of the challenges you'll be asked to complete in Fortnite this week is to emote at stone statues. There is more than one place you can complete this quest--simply click on the challenge in your quest log from the lobby and it will highlight where you need to go. We've outlined two stone statue locations in our guide below.

Fortnite's Season 5, Week 9 challenges are now live and can be completed for XP.

Stone statue location guide

Below you'll find both stone statue locations marked on the map: