January 2021

Jett also got a nerf thrown her way

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Free-to-play publisher Tilting Point has formed a new studio in St Petersburg, Russia, to expand its global network. ...

Miniclip has purchased Online Soccer Manager developer Gamebasics for an undisclosed fee.  ...

Having played a fair bit of the godlike roguelite that is Hades, you may have found yourself wondering where you can get your hands on more Nectar, or even Ambrosia, Nectar’s rarer and more valuable cousin. Both these resources play a large part in forming deeper relationships with the various characters of the underworld. So in this guide to Ambrosia and Nectar in Hades, we’ll walk you through the best methods for gaining these resources, and what to do with them once you have them.

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If you’ve sunk any time at all into Hades, the magnificent roguelite from Supergiant Games (and our favourite game of 2020), you’ll know by now that it’s a pretty challenging game. But one size does not fit all, and Supergiant have given you the ability to make the game either easier or harder for yourself with the God Mode and Hell Mode settings. Learn everything you need to know by reading our Hades God Mode and Hell Mode guide below.

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Launch day log in issues aren’t a thing I’d expect to hear about surrounding a single player stealth romp but hey, it’s 2021. There are no rules. Hitman 3 is out today and it seems that the website meant to import your prior hitmaning progress into the newest murder fest is having a bit of a struggle. That wouldn’t be so bad, except waiting to make that import is effectively keeping players from starting in on Hitman 3. Io Interactive say they’re on the case.

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Among Us

became a surprise smash hit in 2020. The hidden-role murder ’em up was originally released in 2018, and managed to burst its way to fame late last year thanks in large part to lots of Twitch streamers. Alas, this success brought with it a fair few challenges for the developers at Innersloth. Yesterday, they released a dev blog explaining why development and updates have been taking so long, and telling fans a bit about what’s been going on behind the scenes.

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Rami Ismail is one half of the former team best known as Vlambeer, the developer behind games like Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers, and Nuclear Throne. He's on Twitter as @tha_rami.

When I was a kid, I would run away from home every time I needed an injection, which was at least once a year for the vaccination I needed for our annual family trip to my father’s homeland of Egypt. I would scream and plead and fight whoever tried to hold me down whenever I was in the doctor’s office. More than once, the sheer fear summoned some ungodly strength in me that injured whoever was unlucky enough to be involved in the process of keeping me healthy.

Chris Tilton is a composer and he’s written music for a few TV shows (Fringe, Zoo) and video games (SimCity, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Black). This year, Chris welcomed our robot overlords by writing the music for a robot companion called MOXIE, which releases in 2021.

Dante Douglas is a writer & designer who does secret lore things at Riot Games. He is online as @videodante.

Hello Giant Bomb Community. I’m Dante. It’s been a minute. I’m going to talk about video games. I would usually preface this with some words about the year in general. I don’t have those words this year. I’m sorry.

I feel like I’ve been yelling online about everything for the past eight months, so apologies for not being as eloquent now. Here is a link to a document I prepared earlier this year of national bail and mutual aid funds for bailing out protesters and supporting communities in their fights for justice. Consider donating to one, or one in your area, if you can.

Soha E is a Diversity & Inclusion leader at Riot Games and sits on the Board of Directors for Dames Making Games. She also streams every Saturday with her friend Kelsey and you can follow her on Twitter. Her avatar is made by @snowswallow_.

There’s a GTAV video that always makes me laugh. Michael flies a blimp toward a replica of the Griffith Observatory as Eddie Murphy’s “Party All The Time” plays on the radio and crashes right into the building. The blimp bursts into flames and screams from innocent bystanders can be heard offscreen. Michael ragdolls to the balcony where a quest marker waits for him, and a cutscene immediately starts where he throws his arms out to greet an NPC with a casual “Davey!”

In any other year besides 2020, Broadway Alex would be singing and dancing on Broadway for your amusement. You can follow him on Twitter.

Hey all! Alex Boniello here. Happy to be back to write another Game of the Year list for my favorite games outlet.

You might know me better as Broadway Alex (thanks for that, Dan). But, admittedly, it feels weird to call myself that this year.

Like many other industries, the entertainment industry has been decimated by COVID. Live theater, especially in New York City, has been brutalized on a level that I cannot possibly enumerate. Television sets have been mostly shut down. Live music, too. This has been the hardest year of my life professionally and personally. I have lost jobs to this virus. I have also lost friends. I am sure many of you can relate.

Evil Uno wrestles for AEW as a member of the Dark Order. You can follow him on Twitter.

Hello, this is Evil Uno of the Dark Order. I’m a pro wrestler for All Elite Wrestling and now a Twitch streamer. It’s an honor to meet you.

2020, right? What a year. As shitty as 2020 has been, it's been a great year for video games. Last year I would have predicted some of my honorable mentions as being in my top three games of the year. The fact that they're not is a testament to the incredible line-up of games that released in this otherwise awful year. Remember that this list is subjective and there is no particular order to it; I’ve also included games that were released prior to this year. Please refrain from being angry if you’re game didn’t make my list, it probably sucked anyway.

Jeff Green is a former game journalist and current Partner & Business Development Lead at Minn/Max Consulting. In 2020, he launched and hosted the Branching Narratives podcast on US Gamer. He's @greenspeak on Twitter.

As a Professional Videogame Consultant, it is my job--nay, my calling--to assess a situation and provide analysis. So here is my professional opinion of 2020: It fucking sucked balls. Not that you need me or my expertise to tell you that. But what was also true about 2020 was that for introverted, antisocial dorks like me, who are far happier alone in front of a game than sitting with a forced smile at a party or dinner gathering or anything involving “having conversations,” there was a silver lining. Being stuck at home gave us the perfect opportunity to indulge in our hobbies to our hearts’ content, guilt free. For once we were told to stay inside, that it was better to isolate. We were doing our civic duty by playing Destiny for eight hours in a row!

Six months ago, Fall Guys arrived on PlayStation 4 via subscription service PlayStation Plus. Since then, it has been a PlayStation console exclusive, while also being available on PC.

Six months later, it now seems a matter of if not when the breakout battle royale will come to other console platforms, such as Nintendo Switch and Xbox. But when will it happen?

Around a week ago, a bit of light brandter between Fall Guys' cheeky Twitter and the official Xbox UK account set tongues wagging that Fall Guys would arrive on Xbox Game Pass sooner rather than later.

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Veteran designer Takaya Imamura has left Nintendo after more than three decades at the company.

A post on his Facebook page this afternoon (spotted by Kotaku) noted today was his last day at Nintendo.

Over a career spanning six console generations, Imamura worked on some of Nintendo's biggest franchises such as Donkey Kong and Zelda. His work for the latter included designing the fan-favourite character Tingle, but it's for his creation of the core Star Fox cast of characters that Imamura is best known.

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It's one of the most famous board games of all time, but until recently chess wasn't getting a whole lot of attention on Twitch. That began to change last year, however, when chess streamers started to raise the profile of the game on the streaming platform - and thanks to the release of a certain Netflix series, those numbers have now reached new heights.

In January last year, chess was averaging 3298 concurrent viewers over 24 channels on Twitch, peaking at 29,820 viewers. This month, that average is 24,048, with around 132 channels streaming chess at any one time - reaching a peak viewership of 161,968 on 16th January (via TwitchTracker). That was thanks to the efforts of siblings Alexandra and Andrea Botez, whose BlockChamps event - a crossover tournament with popular Minecraft streamers like Pokimane, LilyPichu and Fundy - pulled in over 91,000 concurrent viewers and over 1m unique views, breaking the chess viewership record for a single stream (via Chess.com).

2020 gifted us many awesome games, alongside the beginning of a new generation of consoles. As part of Twinfinite’s yearly awards, you voted for your Readers’ Choice Game of the Year of 2020, and below you can find all the winners.

2020 was a great year for games, and 2021 looks to be potentially even more promising. As part of Twinfinite’s Game of the Year awards, you voted for your Readers’ Choice Most Anticipated Game of 2021, and below you can find all the results.

Readers’ Choice Most Anticipated Game of 2021

5. Elden Ring

FromSoftware’s collaboration with George R. R. Martin has been rather elusive since its reveal, with the developer basically dropping under the radar.

Hitman 3 is an incredible conclusion to an amazing franchise and while many players are getting ready to dive in as Agent 47 once more, there are a few things to know first about previous content before getting started. For those looking to import Hitman 1 and Hitman 2 content before diving into the third game, here's what you need to know. 

How to import Hitman and Hitman 2 content

To import the content from previous games, you're going to want to do so before starting Hitman 3. You're also going to want to make sure that you have an active IO account, and you'll need to have owned the previous games (for obvious reasons) to ensure that you go into Hitman 3 with your Hitman 2 profile (we'll go into how Hitman 1 marries into that further down). 

All transfers will require the IO account to be linked to the platform of choice. While Access Passes and Legacy content comes into play, the progression from 2 into 3 must be done via the IO website. 

Another important thing to keep in mind is that there is an ecosystem limit. You will not be able to import Xbox saves over onto PlayStation platforms or vice versa. As long as you are within a consistent ecosystem, you're fine. 

Free game trials have become a trend for Nintendo Switch Online, previously granting subscribers limited-time access to games like Crash Team Racing and Overwatch. Dead Cells opens its doors next, and from January 26 to February 1, Switch players can indulge in one of the generation’s best action roguelikes.

Not only will Dead Cells be available in full during the one-week trial, but a sale will shave 50% off its usual $24.99 asking price across all digital storefronts. That’s good news for Switch players who wind up digging the game but aren’t able to complete it during the free period. 

The other day, we got an actual release date for New Pokémon Snap, and I couldn't be happier that it's basically on the horizon. The original game still absolutely slaps, so I hope this new iteration delivers even a fraction of that feel-good fun.

In the meantime, we can look to the future, as Nintendo has unveiled several details about this upcoming version. As expected it's going to be a full $59.99 release, but now we know that it'll clock in at 6.8 GB in size. Here's the curious part though: the listing also notes that it will have "online play" of some sort, as well as cloud save support.

Will it be in the form of innocent "picture uploading and liking," perhaps? Like a sort of pseudo-social network? Or will it feature a legit online play component? Time will tell, but we know that there's going to be a lot of Pokémon news coming this year in honor of the 25th anniversary.

New Pokémon Snap [Nintendo]

Guerrilla Games has launched a major update for the PC edition of Horizon Zero Dawn. Version 1.10, which is live in-game right now, brings a variety of graphical improvements, performance tweaks, and bug fixes to Aloy's mechanized world of adventure.

In doing so, Guerrilla Games took time to note that Version 1.10 will be one of the last major updates to Horizon's PC port, as the team will now be shifting its priorities toward sequel Horizon Forbidden West, revealed during Sony's PlayStation 5 2020 event and currently in production for PS4 and PS5, with an eye to release at some point later in 2021.

"As our team continues development on our upcoming title Horizon Forbidden West, we are shifting to less frequent updates for Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition for PC after this patch," said the developer. "Please note that we will continue to monitor our community spaces as always! We want to thank you all for your continued support and for sending in your crash reports over the past months. The information we received through your reports was invaluable to further investigate and help fix some of the trickier issues that we fixed in Patch 1.10."

This doesn't necessarily mean that Horizon Zero Dawn on PC will not receive further improvements - and lord knows it needed them at its less-than-stellar launch - but clearly Guerrilla are essentially done getting the desktop edition up to scratch, and will now be focusing development on Aloy's next jaunt into the mechanical wilderness.

Super Mario Bros. 35 is still trucking, inching closer to its expiration date. But before then, Nintendo has a quick little event in store for us.

The challenge? Kill 3.5 million Bowsers from 11PM PT on January 18 through 10:59PM PT on January 25. Or more simply, you only need to kill one Bowser to net a potential reward of 350 Platinum Points (which can be used on physical or digital goods at My Nintendo).

You can defeat your Bowser through the standard mode or the new event; which I'd highly recommend as it's catered around finding Bowser quicker. I ran the event several times, and since you start with a Fire Flower, you can take out Bowser fairly quickly if you run across one (whether it's in a castle level or via someone sending it your way as a hazard).

Just to be sure I ran a few courses and took out around five Bowsers over the course of roughly 10 minutes. It's easy! If you have Switch Online you have Mario 35, so you may as well dive in, get it done, and (probably) reap the 350 platinum benefit.

Since these events can be a little finicky sometimes in terms of timelines, we've provided the official documentation below just in case. Make a reminder to do it! It's one of the simplest ways to get platinum yet, that you can use on stuff like this.

Take on Bowser and earn 350 Platinum Points in the Super Mario Bros. 35 World Count Challenge [My Nintendo]

We are just a week out from the launch of Bloober Team's latest chilling horror jaunt, The Medium, which will launch on Xbox Series X and PC January 28. For those of you gaming on the latter platform, at least one impending fear can be put to rest, as the developer has released the rig requirements need to guide Marianne through her waking nightmare.

It's a relatively complex state of affairs, as the visual guide below mostly caters for 30FPS running at 1080p and above. So if you want the silky smoothness of 60FPS, and really want to rally up the resolution, then be sure to add a little extra juice to the statistics listed. For the most part, many modern rigs will run The Medium at low-to-mid settings, but given the action-RPG is visual heavy, with emphasis on atmosphere and effects, top-tier might be the way to go. The Medium doesn't require, but recommends that players use an SSD.

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing In Disguise | $33 | Amazon

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Genshin Impact has one of the most exciting regions that I’ve visited in a video game in years. It’s called Liyue and its geological and agricultural bounty is distinct from other open world games. To the west, a traveller can find gorgeous cliffs of ashy stone and golden amber. In the east, rugged archipelagos mark…

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Hitman 3 is out today. And while it’s pretty different from previous games in the rebooted trilogy, it’s still a lot of fun. If you’re new to the series or coming back from a while away, should you jump right into 3 or start with the earlier games? Personally, I’d say you’d be fine just starting with 3, but if you…

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In different ways, some of Marvel’s superheroes like Captain America and the Punisher, and Lucasfilm’s infamous Galactic Empire, have all been in the news as of late for reasons that have little to do with the stories we’re used to seeing them in. Instead, they’ve become part of the odd and often irresponsible way…

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After an initial social media miscommunication, there's an update on the status of Fall Guys and an Xbox Game Pass debut.

The post Fall Guys Isn’t Heading to Xbox Game Pass appeared first on Siliconera.

A special livestream with voice actors is upon us! The special broadcast promises Sword Art Online game, anime, and manga news for 2021.

The post New Sword Art Online Game, Anime and Manga News Coming This Month appeared first on Siliconera.

The Sonic the Hedgehog movie streaming will be available for Hulu subscribers next month. The service currently offers two Sonic cartoons.

The post Sonic Movie Streaming Will Begin on Hulu in February appeared first on Siliconera.

Marvel is finally having fun with its most confusing couple

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In this 2018 GDC talk, programmer Christina Coffin explains alternative approaches to emitting particles from game environment effects. ...

The magic of AI-powered text to speech continues as Skyrim modders get their hands on an application that generates speech from text based on voice samples from Bethesda games. It’s already inspired a trailer with AI-only voice acting and a new mod that gives Skyrim characters lines to compliment your dragonborn’s naked figure. Oh, the things modders will do.

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Dan Teasdale and Panzer are the dynamic duo that make up independent video game development studio No Goblin, creators of Roundabout and 100 ft Robot Golf. Hit them up on Twitter @deliciousbees and @panzerskank, respectively.

Dan: 2020’s over, baby! It’s 2021’s time to shine! Hell yeah, we’re living in the Johnny Mnemonic year!

Panzer: Aw fuck yeah, more Keanu Reeves.

Dan: To celebrate, we’ve put together a Game of the Year crossword puzzle for you to usher in the cyber future. If you want to play, just click on the Online Crossword Experience link below to get teleported to a new page that has a crossword on it.

Ed Zitron is the CEO of PR firm EZPR, and he loves to play games to forget about work.

Hello everyone! This is my first top 10 list for Giant Bomb, and this has been an especially peculiar year for gaming for me, in that it was the first I can think of where I didn’t necessarily love ten games, and hated several major releases (Doom Eternal and Spider-Man: Miles Morales). But for the most part, the games I loved I absolutely fell head over heels for.

Emma Kidwell is a narrative designer and writer who was recently named one of Forbes 30 under 30 for 2021. This year she had her most recent game, Half, showcased at the Smithsonian Museum of Arts and Sciences. Her upcoming title, I Wish I Were a Robot, will be released in 2021. You can follow her on Twitter @emmakidwell or check out her games on Itch.io.

You don’t need me to tell you how much 2020 sucked. Any grand plans of traveling, working on creative ambitions, or spending more time with friends were crushed and seem like a distant memory. Sure, spending so much time at home may have inspired others to find a new routine and adjust to their new normal-- I’ve worked remotely my entire career so that much wasn’t new for me. But the isolation had me searching for comfort in games, like I’ve done many times in the past. If you’re anything like me, you seek out nostalgic media to regain any sense of normalcy. In addition to going back to much loved games from my past, I also played more new games than I think I have in the last few years combined.