As a young girl in the small town of Cromwell, Connecticut, all Andraya Yearwood wanted to do was run. Born into a family that prized athleticism, she dabbled in soccer, basketball, football, and dance as a child. But one day in the sixth grade, she saw older students running around the track oval, and she was hooked.…
Launching today on Steam from Scribblenauts and Lock’s Quest creators 5TH Cell, Castlehold is a free-to-play deck-building strategy game that manages to cram a ton of strategy fun into battles that last under 10 minutes.
The Lenten season requires you to suspend your disbelief. Not sure about a skinny 33-something dude turning down a loaf of bread after fasting in the wilderness for 40 days? It’s Lent, baby! Get over it! Planning to give up sugar for six weeks? Sure, okay—Lent! A little shaky on hand-washing practices at your parish’s…
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (Xbox) | $45 | Microsoft Store
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Cross-Gen Bundle (Xbox) | $56 | Microsoft Store
Echtra Games, the San Francisco-based studio founded in 2016 by Diablo and Torchlight co-creator Max Schaefer, is now owned by Zynga, the company that gave us FarmVille.
Four students from Three Houses are on the way!
The post Fire Emblem Heroes Banner With Marianne and Dedue Revealed appeared first on Siliconera.
Make sure you fill up your Character Showcase for the Genshin Impact Vishaps and Where to Find Them event.
The post Genshin Impact Vishaps and Where to Find Them Lets You Borrow Allies appeared first on Siliconera.
We will have to wait a bit longer until we can enjoy the new Dynasty Warriors game with robust character customizations.
The post Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires Delayed Past Early 2021 appeared first on Siliconera.
The eight costumes in the DLC were formerly available as pre-order bonuses.
The post Yakuza: Like a Dragon Legends Costume Set Free Until April 2 appeared first on Siliconera.
Doom 3 VR Edition will launch for PlayStation VR on 29th March, Bethesda has announced.
This VR-enhanced version will contain the 2004 first-person shooter and its expansions Resurrection of Evil and The Lost Mission, enhanced with new textures, sound effects and virtual reality features.
The game makes use of the system's Aim controller for its motion-controlled flashlight-mounted weapons. You'll also use it to check your handy wrist-mounted display.
2064: Read Only Memories might have my favourite opening of any game ever. I'm thinking specifically about the bit you can play in a demo on Steam. You're a writer, sat in your tiny apartment, procrastinating about writing a review of some fancy new headphones. You manage to power through the review and go to sleep after flicking eyes across the local news, and then you wake up in the middle of the night when a polite robot breaks in and tidies up.
2064 is the work of MidBoss, a studio based in Berkeley, California, and which specialises in games with a LGBTQIA+ focus and a strong sense of diversity and inclusivity. The game is an adventure affair set in a future poised on the brink of three singularities, and in the opening ten minutes there's a brilliant joke about being a writer and an excellent discussion of Asimov's laws of robotics. I've spent the morning playing the demo for Read Only Memories: Neurodiver, the studio's follow-up. It's every bit as good as 2064. It might be love.
The Neurodiver in question is a genetically-engineered lifeform that allows Espers to move through other people's memories. In the demo, which is short but filled with details and conversations and possibilities, it allows you to travel back in time to a client's missing memories of a long-ago bar transaction that may or may not have gone awry.
5th Cell, the developer of handheld curio Scribblenauts, has announced its new game today, called Castlehold. It's a card-based tactics game - which is a bit of a surprise, given the sharp left turn from Scribblenauts. And it's also very good, from the brief bit of it that I've played - which, hands up, was maybe a bit of a surprise to me too.
It's out today in early access on Steam, it's free-to-play with optional microtransactions, and it does suffer from a bad case of fonts. And if we're being brutal, there is a touch of the less-fashionable mobile game to it all, too, thanks to a mish-mash of styles and familiarly broad-sweeping army types like 'medieval' and 'western'. But! It is good, and I am a snob, so we'll just skip past the aesthetics here and get to the meat of it.
Castlehold is played on a symmetrical island map, made of exactly 19 hexagonal tiles. Like a Hearthstone or a Magic the Gathering or any other card battler, you play one-on-one, against another human or the AI, bringing your custom-built or preset deck of characters that form your army and playing them onto the map turn-by-turn. The goal is tactical, or strategic maybe, in that you have to get a unit of yours from your castle, the tile nearest to you where they spawn, to your opponent's castle at the map's opposite end, while they of course are trying to do the same.
The plaintiffs behind a class action lawsuit that alleged EA was secretly adjusting the difficulty of FIFA Ultimate Team to get players to spend more money on packs have withdrawn their case.
On November 2020, three Californians said EA was secretly manipulating them in a lawsuit that revolved around a patented AI technology known as dynamic difficulty adjustment.
Dynamic difficulty adjustment, known more commonly by FIFA players as scripting or momentum, is a technology that unfairly affects the results of matches in a bid to encourage more spending on packs.
FarmVille publisher Zynga has acquired Torchlight 3 developer Echtra Games for an undisclosed sum.
Echtra Games will now join Zynga's portfolio of studios and work with CSR Racing developer NaturalMotion on "a new, yet to be announced RPG for cross-platform play".
In a statement on the purchase, reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Zynga boss Frank Gibeau said Echtra would help grow Zynga's many mobile franchises to PC and console audiences.
Rare, in-season Game Pass appearance of a current sports video game
Don’t Breathe director Fede Álvarez is behind the experimental series
Fans will have to wait a bit longer for Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires, the revamped version of the latest entry in the franchise, as an announcement from the game’s developer Omega Force shows.
In a statement posted to Twitter by the official Koei Tecmo America Twitter account on Mar. 3, it was revealed that the game would not be releasing in its previously announced launch window.
“Although Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires was initially announced as an early 2021 title, the team is still working hard on delivering the best game possible so we wanted to let our fans know the current situation and will announce the new launch window in future updates,” the statement reads. “We apologize for the delay and appreciate your continued support.”
The announcement also came with a preview of the game’s opening movie via a screenshot. The shot features three key characters of the game standing together, though what they’re doing together and what they’re about to do is unclear.
The image, and the full statement from Koei Tecmo America, can be viewed down below.
i had zero expectations of @Outriders (largely bc the marketing to date had left w me no clear sense of the game’s identity or style) but damn did the demo get its hooks into me.
Square Enix has partnered with Polish studio Forever Entertainment to remake some of its catalog titles. ...
[Update: Frogwares has issued a new statement regarding its issuing of the DMCA.
"A DMCA notice proved to be our most effective tool to give us time to gain further potential evidence and to also start the required and lengthy additional legal processes to prevent this from happening again," the developer told Vice. "We are aware that a final ruling on whether Frogwares are obligated to deliver a Steam version has yet not been made and could take years. As it stands, we have an appeals court ruling saying, until further notice Frogwares do not need to deliver a Steam version to Nacon. In the meantime, Nacon decided to take justice into their own hands and release a pirated build."
"We are also aware that the DMCA claim on this Steam version may only be a temporary fix and that the game may make a comeback - in this form or another. Providing partners like Valve with finalised rulings and third-party verified evidence so they can make their final decision takes time and resources. If in the meantime they decide they have to continue selling the game, we can only respect that while continuing to speak to them and provide them with more information."
As it stands, The Sinking City - as published by Frogwares - remains for sale on PS5, Nintendo Switch, and non-Steam PC outlets. The PS4 and Xbox One edition of The Sinking City - as published by Nacon - remain available on their respective PlayStation and Microsoft stores.]
Original article:
In the latest update on the ongoing debacle surrounding The Sinking City, Steam has once again pulled Frogwares' horror-mystery from its storefront, following the developer's issuing of a DMCA against publisher Nacon, with whom it is embroiled in an increasingly ugly legal dispute.
Xbox Game Pass is back in March, and this time, it's a little niche. Sports niche.
Madden NFL 21, halfway into its relevant lifecycle, is coming to consoles today. That's probably the biggest get. Beyond that on March 4 we're also getting Football Manager 2021, as well as NBA 2K21. Enjoy the rest of the virtual NFL and NBA seasons while you can.
"Later in March," Game Pass is adding NHL 21 into the mix to complete the sports trifecta, but there's another concession, just in case you don't like sportsball; Star Wars: Squadrons. It seems like such an obvious "hey, here's something else" addition, but I'll take it.
Squadrons is still a relatively new, and well received Star Wars game, which is becoming more and more rare these days. It's just a shame it's one of the only versions without VR support.
The cycle of Game Pass continues unabated. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will depart Microsoft’s games-on-demand service on March 15.
Games Japan Studio worked on, like Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Bloodborne, and the original Knack, are on sale at the PlayStation Store.
The post PlayStation Store Discounts Japan Studio Games Like Bloodborne and Knack appeared first on Siliconera.
A new round of FFVII Remake Intergrade screenshots look at the new Photo Mode and Yuffie episode.
The post FFVII Remake Intergrade Screenshots Also Look at Yuffie’s Episode appeared first on Siliconera.
Don't let your dreams be dreams, kids, because Dead by Daylight's new killer is a K-Pop star with a serious grudge. Be that musically-included murderer you've always wanted to be with the newly announced Trickster killer.
Revealed exclusively via IGN, the newest chapter on the way for Dead by Daylight fans is called All-Kill and its setting centers around a K-pop star that is overcome with jealousy. He wants to be front and center and he's not above murdering his fellow bandmates to get to where he wants to be.
Is this a very different direction for the game, especially following the Silent Hill chapter? Absolutely. Is it kind of neat they went this far left field? You betcha! Part of what keeps this game alive is every chapter is different. Some chapters bring in iconic faces from the archives of horror legends, while others — like this — show off the more adventurous side of the team.
We've got a small look at what's ahead with the teaser trailer seen below:
Click here to watch embedded media 
It's been a long road for Madden NFL 21's franchise mode. On the heels of a community campaign to "#FixMaddenFranchise" when it was revealed that the latest edition of the game featured franchise changes that read more like patch notes than upgrades worthy of a new game, EA Tiburon unveiled a long-term vision for the series' franchise mode.
Now, following previous updates that added things like smarter CPU trade logic, playoff brackets, revamped player-stats cards, and additional commissioner tools, EA Tiburon and EA Sports have announced the final franchise update to Madden NFL 21's franchise mode. This latest update delivers on the promise EA Tiburon made to go further down the CPU trade logic and evaluations path, while also adding additional historical context to your league.
Xbox Game Pass is adding six new titles to the rotating library later this month and going into April, and the latest additions are especially great for sports fans. The Game Pass offerings change every single month, rotating older titles for new entries, allowing for new play experiences
The latest lineup is unusually themed, sticking heavily to sports games with the exception of Star Wars: Squadrons (though, that's racing, so if you squint your eyes...). For the full lineup of what's coming next, here's what Xbox had to share:
Rip and tear, virtual reality fans, because Sony has just announced that Doom 3 VR is on the way for PSVR players. What's more terrifying than a usual trip to Mars to fight for your life? Taking a trip to Mars to fight for your life in VR.
In a recent PlayStation Blog post, Bethesda's associate content manager Parker Wilhelm detailed what players can expect with Doom 3: VR Edition when it arrives on March 29. The title itself arrives later this month for PlayStation 4 players with a backwards compatible version for those that own a PS5.
Click here to watch embedded mediaDoom 3: VR Edition comes with a completely revamped base game, both the Resurrection of Evil and The Lost Mission expansions, and a completely retooled experience specifically made with VR in mind. For those that have played the original, remember all of those itty bitty claustrophobic areas? Yeah, now you can feel like you're there in real life with VR, and Bethesda promises that it will be amazing.
UPDATE 8:36pm: Following Frogwares' decision to force the removal of The Sinking City from Steam via DMCA takedown, publisher Nacon has issued a lengthy response:
"Frogwares published an article on March 1st, 2021, accusing Nacon of having 'pirated' the game The Sinking City; Nacon hereby wishes to set the record straight regarding these unjustified accusations.
"Nacon is contractually the sole exclusive distributor of The Sinking City game on Steam.
Studio Fizbin, the developer behind acclaimed point-and-click adventure series The Inner World, has delayed the release of its beautiful narrative puzzle platformer Minute of Islands, meaning it'll no longer launch on 18th March as originally planned.
Minute of Islands charts the adventures of a young engineer named Mo as she journeys across a procession of beautifully distinct islands, meeting new characters and uncovering forgotten secrets in an attempt to save her archipelago home from a disaster of ancient origins.
Eurogamer's Christian Donlan was thoroughly charmed by Minute of Islands' early moments when he took the Steam Game Festival demo for a spin last month, calling it a "neat blend of exploration, traversal and puzzle solving", both fascinating and disquieting.
I don't know if someone at Sony was inspired by that Hades run with a pomegranate, but it seems the obsession with fruity controllers has now resulted in a patent application, as Sony has devised a way to turn everyday items into working controllers. Including a banana.
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the tech would apparently allow any "non-luminous passive object being held by the user" to be transformed into a controller. Objects would apparently be scanned with a camera, which would track items based on pixels, contours and colours. A game could be trained to recognise objects as controllers, or tell users which household items could be used as a controller.
The patent application uses bananas and oranges as examples, explaining that the system would be able to track an object's movement, so the object could be used to steer an in-game camera - or to accelerate, decelerate and brake. I'm calling this Gran Turnipso.
AMD has unveiled its latest desktop graphics card, the RX 6700 XT. The new card, which sits beneath the RX 6800 and 6800 XT in the company's stack, is designed for 1440p gaming at 60fps with high settings throughout. This kind of performance pits the RX 6700 XT against the $399 RTX 3060 Ti and $499 RTX 3070, as does the price point of $479. (We checked with AMD, and no UK or EU pricing has yet been announced.) AMD is primarily targeting gamers on 10-series GTX or AMD RX 500-series graphics cards, who can expect around a doubling of performance when shifting to the RX 6700 XT if AMD's figures are to be believed.
This is a 40 compute unit design, meaning this card has half the CUs of the flagship RX 6900 XT, but the card is driven at a higher frequency. Looking at the rest of the specs, the new graphics card has a smaller Infinity Cache than its bigger Big Navi predecessors, with 96MB here compared to 128MB on the other cards; likewise the total VRAM count here is 12GB versus 16GB. This is due to the 192-bit bus; each 32-bit channel of that bus that access 1 or 2GB of memory, so AMD could only realistically choose between 6GB and 12GB with this design.
Given the target on 1440p gaming, I think the 12GB allocation makes sense - and provides a marketing win over Nvidia, whose 3060 Ti and 3070 ship with only 8GB of RAM. AMD highlighted a few games that require over 8GB at 1440p max settings, so it'll be interesting to see whether the RAM advantage is impactful once we begin benchmarking!
With the arrival of the new wave of consoles, we didn't have the time to fully check out Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered when it launched, but the Criterion masterpiece is especially deserving of our focus now as support has been added for the nex-gen consoles, opening the door to a 4K experience running at 60 frames per second. More than that, in the wake of the news that Criterion's new Need for Speed title has been delayed, it's also an opportunity to reflect on an astonishing run of iconic racing games from the Guildford-based developer.
It's something I was discussing with John Linneman recently: what exactly is peak Criterion? Some might say it's Need for Speed Hot Pursuit - a game that radically rebooted the franchise, bringing over the best of Burnout but respecting the core DNA of what made the original NFS titles so great. And then there was Autolog, of course, a remarkably successful attempt to meld social networking into a video game. But despite some remarkable coding resulting in input latency that matched or even beat some 60fps games, Hot Pursuit was a 30fps title in an era where 60fps was Criterion's hallmark. So maybe it's actually Burnout Paradise that's peak Criterion? But what about the incredible Burnout 3: Takedown? Or maybe the purist's favourite, Burnout 2: Point of Impact?
Well, I hope you like sports. This month's Xbox Game Pass additions are headlined by Football Manager 2021 on PC and console, which will join Microsoft's subscription library tomorrow, on 4th March.
NBA 2K21 for console and on Android via xCloud also becomes available tomorrow, while Madden NFL 21 is available now via EA Play (which is included on console if you are an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber).
EA Play also gets Star Wars Squadrons at some point this month - that's Motive Studios' spaceship dogfighting game which launched in October last year. Emma wrote that it was a "scrappy, compelling starfighter that excels in VR" in Eurogamer's Star Wars Squadrons review.
In an interview for the upcoming doc Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters, Sugar tracks Mignola’s influence on her
