February 2021

It came in like a wrecking ball

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Third annual Kickstarter puts a spotlight on independent creators

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An engaging review of a century of cinema

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Some may remember that in early 2015, The Wall Street Journal ran a story that claimed sources had informed the outlet that a live-action Legend of Zelda TV series was being developed by Netflix and Nintendo. The story made the rounds, of course, but Nintendo’s then-president Satoru Iwata shut down the rumors stating the information was incorrect, which seemed true given a series never materialized. According to comedian Adam Conover of CollegeHumor fame, the Zelda show was very real, and the only reason it got canned, along with other potential Nintendo adaptations, was because someone at Netflix leaked it.

Speaking on The Serf Times podcast, Conover reveals that at one point he and CollegeHumor were working on a secret project to create a claymation Star Fox in the vein of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. Nintendo was on board with the idea, and Conover says Shigeru Miyamoto even visited their office at one point. 

Mods for games are nothing new and Cyberpunk 2077 mods have been pouring out pretty much since day one of the game's launch. While there is always a risk of corrupted save files when modding any game, CD Projekt Red is warning players about potential security risks relating to a DLL file vulnerability. 

For those that may not know, DLL is short for Dynamic Link Libraries and they are like EXEs but aren't directly executable. DLL contains things like UIs, classes, variables, and other functions and is a part of virtually all operative systems. These files include important coding that most systems require at startup, and a failure to recognize this library can result in the failure for a system to boot up at all. 

The studio behind the open-world RPG took to Twitter to offer up a warning, saying, "If you plan to use Cyberpunk 2077 mods/custom saves on PC, use caution. We've been made aware of a vulnerability in external DLL files the game uses, which can be used to execute code on PCs. [The] issue will be fixed ASAP. For now, please refrain from using files from unknown sources." 

Ah, the Mako. Many Mass Effect fans love it and just as many loathe it. I myself have a love/hate relationship with the rugged terrain vehicle, which is why when we spoke with BioWare as part of our cover story one of the first questions we asked was "What did you do to the Mako?" For those curious about testing those awful driving skills once more, here is the Mass Effect Legendary Edition Mako changes you can expect when the remaster drops later this May. 

While the bulk of mechanics remain unaffected in the trilogy in an effort to keep the experience "organic," a few quality of life improvements were a priority. With HUD adjustments and smoother shooting mechanics in the first game, the Mako changes are among a few adjustments made to make the first game even better. 

When driving the Mako in the first game, a feeling of chaos is definitely felt. Crash-landing on various worlds only to spin out of control into a pool of lava isn't the standard definition of fun, but that doesn't take away from the other in-air moments that felt nothing short of exhilarating. So what's changed? 

The Mass Effect Legendary Edition officially has a release date alongside a shiny new trailer to see all of the differences BioWare made, especially to the first game. Now that we know it's coming this May and what the upcoming trilogy remaster is bringing with it (and what it is leaving behind), we decided to sit down and talk about what our short time with the Legendary Edition was like and what parts fans should be excited for the most. 

Join our chat about our Mass Effect Legendary Edition preview impressions as Alex Stadnik, Kimberley Wallace, and Liana Ruppert dive deep into how the smaller changes made are more important than many might think.

From changes to Ios, to more cohesive elements added to connect the three games together even more – here is what you should know about the Mass Effect Legendary Edition before it arrives on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC (with forward-compatible upgrades for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X) this May 14. 

A court has ordered Valve to pay $4 million at the close of a patent infringement lawsuit filed against it by Ironburg Inventions over the design of its now-discontinued Steam Controller. ...

The Frontier, a huge Fallout: New Vegas mod that was pulled last week after one of its artists was found to have posted “animated pedophillic content” online, is now back.

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Cyberpunk 2077 developers CD Projekt Red have had to issue a warning today that anyone deciding to install a mod for the game should “use caution” after a security issue was discovered.

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Jared Leto’s back and it seems he’s gotten a makeover

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A lot could change, but college sports is coming back to console video gaming

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Nintendo also canned a Star Fox claymation show with College Humor because of it.

The post Adam Conover Claims Leaks Made Nintendo Cancel a Zelda Netflix Show appeared first on Siliconera.

In the upcoming PC management sim Definitely Not Fried Chicken, you'll need to balance the day-to-day of running a genuine public-facing establishment while also growing a hidden drug empire on the side.

Pack your bags – we're heading to a "sunshine-soaked city in the glamorous '80s."

While developer Dope Games is leaning hard into fast-food iconography, you don't strictly have to run a restaurant – a nightclub or laundromat can also get the job done. And in terms of wheeling and dealing behind the scenes, your empire can revolve around weed, meth, coke, or "other goods." Take your pick.

According to the Steam blurb, Definitely Not Fried Chicken lets you build out and customize your dual businesses, upgrade equipment as you can afford it, and manage employee duties and morale.

As the devs put it: "Design and lay out your complete production line and establish distribution routes. Fortify your compound's defenses and make sure any 'overly-enthusiastic' customers can't break in. Research and develop better strains of narcotics like marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine."

This is a fantastic premise for the genre, one I think players will be into, but it always comes down to the nitty-gritty details. A management sim can't be judged in a day – it has to be fun upfront and stay fun.

I can't say that 2020 is a year I'm eager to look back on, but when it comes to my game-playing habits, sure, I'll reflect. Sony has another year-in-review Wrap-Up for PlayStation fans to look through.

To participate, you'll need to have logged 10 hours last year and, in certain regions, including Europe and Australia, you will have needed the Additional Data toggled on in the PS4 system settings. All set?

Your personalized PlayStation stats will cover the number of games you played in 2020, your favorite genre, your hour count, your top day of the week for gaming, your trophy unlocks, and, if you actually got a PlayStation 5, some insight about your favorite PS5 game and total PS5 gameplay hours.

If you scroll to the bottom, you'll be able to claim a code for a PlayStation 2020 Wrap-Up dynamic PS4 theme – it's a minimalist gray theme with PlayStation shapes calmly floating across the background. Once you've redeemed it, you can download the Wrap-Up theme from the console's Settings menu.

Apparently, I spent the most time with Nioh 2 (141 hours), Fall Guys (81 hours), and Ghost of Tsushima (58 hours), with a total of 859 hours spent across everything on PS4, and 142 hours spent on PS5. It's also amusing to me to learn that Friday afternoons are my most game-packed day of the week. Huh.

Celebrate your gaming year with PlayStation Wrap-Up 2020 [PlayStation Blog]

The Mass Effect trilogy is returning almost 10 years after BioWare wrapped up the story of Commander Shepard in its sci-fi RPG series. BioWare is re-releasing all three of its original Mass Effect games as the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which brings a host of improvements to the original games and puts them together in one big package.

BioWare released a whole lot of information about what we can expect from the Legendary Edition, including what it improves, what it changes about the trilogy's story, and what it leaves out from the original games. Check out the complete rundown of everything we know about Mass Effect Legendary Edition right now, including when you can play it.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition Release Date And Platforms

Mass Effect Legendary Edition releases on May 14 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It'll also be available on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 through backward compatibility.

As part of Electronic Arts' earnings report, the company shared some details on the next Battlefield game. Management said the game will offer "all-out military warfare" and support more players than ever before for the Battlefield series.

The current player cap for Battlefield is 32 v 32, so presumably this new Battlefield game will offer something more. EA also said the new Battlefield game will offer more player agency, but the company did not elaborate on what that means.

What's more, this new game is tracking ahead of EA's own internal milestones. EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said the new game is scheduled to reach "feature complete" status faster than any other Battlefield game in franchise history.

Apex Legends is coming to Switch on March 9, following the start of Season 8: Mayhem. Season 8 is currently live, implementing several balancing adjustments (as listed in the update's patch notes) and adding playable character Fuse, the 30-30 Repeater Rifle, and map changes to Kings Canyon.

"Porting Apex Legends to its smallest screen yet is a major achievement, and we couldn't have done it without our partners at Panic Button," Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier said in a press release. "We're very proud of what the team has been able to achieve with some smart optimizations for the Switch port to deliver a full-featured Apex Legends experience on the go."

The Switch version of Apex Legends supports all the existing content and features on the Xbox One, PS4, and PC versions of the game. This includes cross-play support, so Switch owners will be folded into Apex Legends' overall player pool as opposed to existing separately.

Pokemon Go's Lunar New Year event is returning from February 9-14. The event will feature a line of Timed Research tasks revolving around Tauros, as well as increased spawns of red-colored Pokemon and other in-game bonuses.

Throughout the Lunar New Year event, Krabby, Goldeen, Magmar, Magikarp, Tepig, and other red-colored Pokemon will appear in the wild more frequently than usual. Gyarados will also be appearing, and you'll have a chance to encounter a Shiny red Gyarados.

In addition to the wild Pokemon spawns, Pokemon that are based on animals associated with Lunar New Year--such as Ekans, Rattata, Torchic, Ponyta, and others--will be hatching from 5 km eggs throughout the event. You'll also have a chance to encounter the following Pokemon in Raid Battles:

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is stepping down from his role as the chief executive of the mega-corporation. He announced that he will transition to a new role as executive chair on the Board of Directors. Andy Jassy, the former CEO of Amazon Web Services and a 23-year-plus veteran, will take over as CEO of Amazon going forward.

"In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence," Bezos said.

Bezos also reflected on his life and career in his email to staffers, which was also published online.

Pokemon Go is celebrating the series' 25th anniversary with the Pokemon Go Tour: Kanto, a one-day event revolving around the original 150 Pokemon. As with the original games, the event will be available in two flavors, a Red Version and a Green Version, and now developer Niantic has explained how you'll be able to choose your event version when the festivities begin later this month.

How To Choose Your Event Version

The Pokemon Go Tour: Kanto event takes place on Saturday, February 20. Before you can participate, however, you'll need to choose which "version" of the event you want to experience. Once the event is underway, open your item bag and select your Pokemon Go Tour: Kanto virtual ticket. After that, you'll see a prompt asking you to Choose Red or Choose Green. Simply tap on the event version you'd like to experience to make your choice. Bear in mind that your choice is final, so think carefully before making your selection.

Version Differences

As was the case with the original Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green games, the primary difference between the event versions boils down to Pokemon selection. Some monsters will be more likely to appear depending on which version of the event you choose. You can see the full list of event-exclusive Pokemon below:

Game publisher Electronic Arts has announced earnings results for its big holiday quarter that ended December 31, and the company is doing great, with live services AKA microtransactions helping fuel the publisher to some big numbers, though it wasn't all good news.

Total revenue for the three-month period was $1.673 billion, compared to EA's projection of $1.675 billion. For the trailing 12 months, EA pulled in revenue of $5.956 billion, which is up 8% year-over-year. Looking at money in the bank, EA made a profit of $1.179 billion for the trailing 12 months, compared to a profit of $2.83 billion for the same period last year (though this number includes the impact of a one-time tax benefit).

EA also called out its EA Sports games for their performance, reaching more than 230 million people in the past year. FIFA's Ultimate Team mode, meanwhile, reached a new record high of 6 million daily active players in December 2020.

If you enjoy both the tactical shooting action of The Division 2 and the zombie horror of Raccoon City, we've got good news: The Division 2's Resident Evil 25th Anniversary crossover event is now live. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the release of the original Resident Evil game for PS1, players of The Division 2 can grab loot that's inspired by the horror series for the next two weeks.

The event runs until February 15, and it is now live on every platform. Players who log in during the event will receive the Leon Kennedy RPD 3-piece outfit automatically. Resident Evil fans will recognize this as one of the outfits that Leon can wear in the much-acclaimed remake of Resident Evil 2.

The 2.02 patch for Valorant aims to start the process of fixing running accuracy, along with shifts to the Competitive system to help ensure players are reaching the proper rank faster while stabilizing the battle for top ranks.

One of the first things the patch is touching up is rifle movement accuracy. All rifles now have a much higher amount of error when moving and shooting. This is to help combat the sensation of running kills gained using rifles, and will make getting kills with rifles while moving more difficult (but not impossible if you can get close enough).

Certain Affinity, an independent developer founded by Bungie veterans that has worked as a support studio on various Halo and Call of Duty projects, has announced it's working on a new IP of its own. The Austin, Texas-based outfit confirmed this in a blog post, but unfortunately, the company is not able to share any specifics about the project at this stage.

"Are we excited to take on a genre and style of game that we've always loved? Thrilled beyond words! Are we honored to be bringing this game to market? Indescribably so! Are there any other tantalizing details regarding this new venture? More than we can say! And we mean that quite literally: the particulars of this new game are still VERY much under wraps," Certain Affinity said. "All we can say for now is that this ambitious new project is the culmination of our goals to steadily and healthily grow a world-class team to create an original IP."

Certain Affinity has 250+ employees already at its Texas and Toronto offices, but the company is looking to grow even further. The company has numerous open positions on its careers page for both the new IP and its other co-development projects for AAA games from other studios.

EA is hoping that its planned acquisition of British racing game maker Codemasters will enable it to start releasing a new racing game every year, on par with its other EA Sports franchises.

In a slide deck accompanying the publisher's Q3 financial results today, EA highlighted the motivations behind its pending acquisition, including the desire to increase its presence in racing, with EA CEO Andrew Wilson describing the sport as "one of the few truly global sports" during the company's earnings call.

EA's presentation further outlined Codemasters' IP line-up, which includes owned IP Dirt, Dirt Rally, Grid, Project Cars, and upcoming mobile franchise Project Cars Go, as well as licensed IP F1 and upcoming licensed games for World Rally Championship beginning in 2023.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/11/06/8-things-to-know-about-dirt-5"]

These would be added to EA's owned racing franchises Need for Speed and Burnout Paradise, as well as Real Racing -- which hasn't had a new game launch since Real Racing 3 in 2013.

Later in the earnings call, COO Blake Jorgensen praised the viability of F1 racing in particular as a global franchise currently gaining further traction in the US, suggesting that EA hopes to become the go-to publisher for racing games more broadly, saying the genre is "one of the best growth opportunities there is."

Today, during Electronic Arts’ quarterly conference call for investors and analysts, chief executive officer Andrew Wilson talked about BioWare.

Wilson expressed great confidence in the studio’s roadmap and in its leadership despite the departure of General manager Casey Hudson and Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah,

“On BioWare, that is an incredible studio filled with incredible people who do incredible work. I think that from the outside world, there have been some blips in their delivery in the last couple of years, but that’s the result of them pushing deeply into innovation and creativity, and we feel “very, very confident” about their future roadmap. We talked about games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect in their future.

With respect to Casey and Mark leaving, again, both good friends of mine, we have tremendous respect for both of them, but this happens in the natural course of creative organizations from time to time, and we feel very very very good about the ongoing leadership of that studio and the main people who come to work every day to deliver more innovation and creativity.

We’ll have more to share about what’s coming from BioWare in the near future. “

Today, during Electronic Arts’ quarterly conference call for investors and analysts, chief executive officer Andrew Wilson and chief operating and financial officer Blake Jorgensen talked about the new Battlefield and EA’s pipeline.

According to Wilson, the company has a “deep and robust pipeline” of new content with “more than 35 new games in various levels of incubation and development for the future.”

He then moved on to talk about the next Battlefield game, which is coming in the Holiday season 2021.

“Our next Battlefield Experience will mark the return to all-out military warfare. The game takes full advantage of the power of the next-generation platforms, to bring massive and immersive battles to life with more players than ever before.

Featuring maps with unprecedented scale, the next iteration of Battlefield takes all the destruction, player agency, vehicle and weapon combat the franchise is known for and elevates it to another level.

The team is focused and ahead of our internal milestones.”

Wilson also added that the game will be revealed in the spring and that EA is making sure that it’s exactly the game that Battlefield fans want to play.

Jorgensen mentioned that the developers are doing an “incredible job” and reiterated that they are way ahead in development compared to previous iterations and they’re tracking for the “earliest feature complete” in the history of the franchise.

If you’d like to hear more about EA’s financial performance during the latest quarter, you can read our dedicated article.

Season 8 just went live on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. And according to a blog post by Game Director Chad Grenier, even more players will be joining the fight when Apex Legends makes its way to Nintendo Switch on Mar. 9.

The Switch version of the game was first announced at EA Play Live last summer, and it was initially supposed to launch last fall. Unfortunately, like many other 2020 releases, the launch was delayed.

Thankfully, the dev team did come through with the implementation of crossplay, which is a feature that’ll be available from day one for Apex Legends on Nintendo Switch.

All new Switch players will be given 30 free levels of the Season 8 Battle Pass, which unlocks a number of stat trackers and a few cosmetics. They’ll also be earning double XP for the first two weeks.

The new season will have been live for a month, but these little boosts should keep new players from missing out on any Season 8 exclusives.

The devs have also confirmed that they’re working on next-gen updates for PS5 and Xbox One X|S owners as well.

If you’re looking to hop into matches any time soon, regardless of your platform of choice, you should read up on the changes that have been made to the game in Apex Season 8.

After weeks of rumours, leaks, and teases, developer Respawn has finally announced that Apex Legends will be getting its long-awaited Switch release on Tuesday, 9th March.

Apex Legends was originally announced for Nintendo's platform last June, with a tentative release window of autumn. However, complications caused by the coronavirus pandemic saw the free-to-play shooter's Switch launch delayed into this year.

Excitement mounted last month when a 2nd February arrival date was - seemingly inadvertently - revealed on international promos for Apex Legends' eighth season of content, but with that date now here, and still no sign of a Switch release, all eyes were on Respawn for more news.

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There have been complaints for a few months now that one of PC case company NZXT’s products has been catching fire. This week, the company has finally apologised and removed the case from its store.

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Top Product: LG 34GK950F-B 34" Ultrawide Monitor | $897 | Amazon

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SCUF has scored a major win in their patent infringement trial over Valve, with a jury awarding $US4 million to the third-party controller manufacturer over the sale of the Steam Controller.

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