April 2021

Yekaterina Lisina’s Perfect Resident Evil Lady Dimitrescu Cosplay

2 years 11 months ago

Yekaterina Lisina has been blowing up in pop culture recently, as the former Olympic basketball player and Guinness record holder has gone viral all over social media due to her height, standing at 6’9”’ inches tall. It seems taking over Tiktok and Instagram wasn’t enough, though, as the influencer has now thrown her hat into the gaming ring with her Lady Dimitrescu cosplay.

Author
Andrew McMahon

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Senran Kagura New Link Goes to Space With Cobra Crossover

2 years 11 months ago

Today Honey Parade Games and Marvelous Entertainment announced a crossover between Shinobi Master: Senran Kagura New Link and Cobra.

The crossover was showcased with a trailer alleging that the game would be renamed Kagura: The Space Pirate, but that part is an April Fool prank.

The crossover, though, is real, and it includes in-game content inspired by Cobra, as you can see below.

If you’re unfamiliar with Cobra, it’s a classic manga by Buichi Terasawa, debuted in 1978 and adapted into plenty of anime.

A sequel manga by Terasawa-sensei himself titled Cobra: Over the Rainbow. is being currently serialized on Comic Walker.

If you’re not familiar with Shinobi Master Senran Kagura: New Link, it’s a gacha game currently available only in Japan for iOS, Android, and PC.

According to recent financial releases by Marvelous, the game is doing well despite being several years old.

Author
Giuseppe Nelva

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Microsoft Flight Simulator FG-1D Corsair Released By Military Visualizations

2 years 11 months ago

Today third-party developer Military Visualizations released a brand new aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator, the FG-1D Corsair.

The aircraft is available at the developer’s own store for $39.99, bringing another popular and distinctive World War II fighter into the Microsoft Flight Simulator lineup.

If you want to see what the warbird looks like, you can check out a gallery below, alongside an official description from the developer.

Author
Giuseppe Nelva

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3 Amazing Anime That Aged Like Fine Wine

2 years 11 months ago

The entertainment medium is ever-evolving, as style, music, artwork, and stories grow with the times. For anime, that statement also rings true. Modern improvements in technology allow for animators and storytellers to push the medium with amazing feats of sakuga and insane plot twists.

Yet, it is also important to look at the anime that laid the foundation for all of that growth as well. Even with age, a lot of the titles that were released decades ago still manage to hold up even today. 

To celebrate, we’ve compiled a list of titles that really held up well over the years. These are three anime that aged like fine wine. 

Author
Andrew McMahon

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Rounding up the Best Gaming April Fools Pranks of 2021

2 years 11 months ago

April Fools is always a day to be careful what you read, as gaming outlets, users, and even developers either get tricked or do their best to trick unsuspecting gamers with pranks. Thankfully, the industry has gotten pretty good about letting everyone in on the joke, resulting in a lot of meta content that is sure to get you laughing.

To celebrate April Fools, we’ve rounded up the best gaming pranks we’ve seen so far. From everything from fake games to comical content updates, take a look at the best April Fools pranks of 2021 below.

Author
Andrew McMahon

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Five Good Settings To Tweak In Outriders

2 years 11 months ago

As if there weren’t enough looter-shooters around, Outriders is out today. It’s a whole lot of game, with a whole lot of settings that can affect how you play. Some are obvious; some are not. It goes without saying that such things are a matter of taste, but I’ve found the following tweaks have made my time on Enoch…

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Author
Ari Notis

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(Update) You can unlock this free freaky World of Warcraft monkey charity pet now

2 years 11 months ago

[Update: Daisy has also been unlocked via the million dollar stretch goal. Just head here to redeem her for free. You have until August 1, 2021 to claim the rewards for this initiative.]

Look into the eyes of that monkey. He totally wants to eat your player character after you sit down to take a nap. But he's a charity item! So it's probably wholesome. Still...I'm watching you.

Wait where were we! Oh yeah, talking about World of Warcraft freebies. As part of a drive for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a monkey pet named Bananas is now free for everyone. They were part of the $500,000 goal, with a further stretch goal of $1 million.

At the moment, the drive is sitting at just under $700,000 at publication, so it'll probably take a bit more time to finish out. Note that the Daisy pet can ride on your back though, it seems, so I'm a little more interested in that perk. Oh, and it doesn't look like it wants to murder you.

You can grab Bananas here from the Battle.net Blizzard Shop, in the pets section of World of Warcraft. It's right there at the top, for free, and listed first. The next stop on the charity train is Daisy the sloth at the $1 mil mark. Eventually, that should get unlocked through the same means and will be available in the Blizzard Shop.

Bananas Unlocked! Claim Yours Today and Donate to Unlock Daisy [Battle.net]

Author
Chris Carter

Twin Peaks-inspired classic Mizzurna Falls gets new fan translation patch

2 years 11 months ago

For fans of obscure PlayStation games and the TV series Twin Peaks, the 1998 PlayStation adventure Mizzurna Falls has been a bit of a white whale. Several translation efforts have been released over the years, but a new patch doesn't just translate it—it also fits the game back onto a disc.

An update on the ROMhacking site details the history of the translation, including the most notable effort involving translator Resident Evie and PlayStation hacker Gemini. While the project did eventually manage to fully translate the game's script, it fizzled out because of one problem: it was too large to fit onto a PlayStation disc.

A new effort from two other developers, nikita600 and Cirosan, uses Evie's script as a base to create a working translation patch. Nikita created a new compression algorithm to fit more text on the disc than was previously possible, and Cirosan—with Evie's blessing—did a fundamental rewrite and edit of Evie's script that was able to fit. So, after months of work on this specific patch and even longer overall, Mizzurna Falls can now be patched to run on a PlayStation disc.

Author
Eric Van Allen

Someone rounded up all of the Switch's top-scoring games that you can beat in four hours or less

2 years 11 months ago

Anyone remember when the Switch came out?

Those initial eShop flood gates? Who could forget...Vroom in the Night Sky, arguably an early low point? Or Kamiko? An amazing high point? Well, there's been a lot of games since that initial period, and Redditor yuxbni76 managed to wrangle up a very choice selection of them.

Cleverly, yuxbni76 hand-picked 144 games with a "75+ Metacritic score that you can beat in four hours." It's simple and elegant. And informative! If you're looking for a rainy day weekend game, these sorts of things can be perfect to just grab and go with.

There's a ton of gems in there, some old, some new. Check out the below list for a starting place, and a good idea of what this missive has to offer.

Top scoring Switch games [Google Sheets via Reddit]

Someone rounded up all of the Switch's top-scoring games that you can beat in four hours or less screenshot

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Author
Chris Carter

The Pokemon Company just sent this bizarre Bidoof email to everyone with a Pokemon account

2 years 11 months ago

It's April Fools', which means I should be laughing and smiling more. But I'm not!

The "holiday" has become somewhat of a farce in recent years, with publishers trying to get in on the "fun" by marketing real games that end up disappointing or fake games that would be amazing but never get made. "Fun!"

But sometimes, a company kind of knocks it out of the park. And when I got a very spammy looking email from The Pokemon Company just titled "Bidoof," I knew I just had to click on it, even if it was leeching my bank account info in real time.

Sure enough, the email contains a gif of a pack of Bidoofs, and by clicking the only link (titled Bidoof), you'll be whisked away to the below music video...featuring the many faces of Bidoof.

This is some "Sonic Twitter" style harmless wholesome fun. I'm so into it. Bidoof.

The Pokemon Company just sent this bizarre Bidoof email to everyone with a Pokemon account screenshot

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Author
Chris Carter

Game Infarcer: My Uncle Who Worked For Nintendo Got Promoted To Fortnite

2 years 11 months ago

[Editor's Note: This guest editorial comes from Jaden Clark, Age 10]

Hey guys, I know what you’re thinking: “Here comes Jaden, the kid who has all the cool secrets about what’s next for Mario and Zelda and Pokémon, because his uncle works at Nintendo.” I hate to break it to you, fellas, but that well of information is about to run dry. My uncle – the same guy who told me that the next Splatoon game is like Grand Theft Auto and you can drive cars that shoot paint and hijack a rocketship and go to the original game – doesn’t work at Nintendo anymore. He got promoted … to Fortnite!

He just started a few weeks ago, so he doesn’t know ALL the secrets yet. I did manage to get some cool information from him, though. Remember that Galactus fight at the end of that Marvel season? Did you know that you can actually play as him? I gave my Gamertag to my uncle, and he gave me access to Galactus and every skin and emote in the game. You basically stomp on everyone on the island and one-hit them. And you can pick up the towers in Steamy Stacks and smoke them like cigarettes and also walk over to the waiting-room island and then you get the bus as a glider. It’s really cool.

Author
Darth Clark

Starting Today, You Can Play As The Stonks Guy In Fortnite

2 years 11 months ago

It’s that time of the year —  April Fool’s Day — and we’ve been posting a ton of great Game Infarcer stories all day. Similarly, developers are looking for creative ways to get a good laugh out of their playerbase. Remedy Entertainment did just that earlier today when it showcased Control on PS1. And now Epic Games is following suit, with a new announcement about the latest skin to grace the expansive cosmetic roster of Fortnite. Yes, that’s right, the costume we’ve all been dying to wear while skydiving towards Weeping Woods is finally available: the Stonks Guy. 

Of course he’s not simply called the “Stonks Guy.” In Fortnite, the outfit pack is fittingly titled, “Diamond Hanz.” The set comes with the classic Stonks Guy mannequin character donning his famous charcoal suit and light blue tie. His shiny hands (or are those really just gloves?) glisten like diamonds. But wait, who the heck is Stonks Guy in the first place? I'll tell you. He's a viral internet icon that symbolizes questionable fiscal decisions (hence the confident stature alongside the hilarious misspelling of "stocks"). You can check out the original meme below.

Author
Jason Guisao

Godzilla vs. Kong Invades World Of Warships With New Update

2 years 11 months ago

The Godzilla vs. Kong movie is out now, and Warner Bros. Pictures is celebrating by partnering up with Wargaming to bring the film's universe into World of Warships with a new update. 

While Godzilla and King Kong aren't actually coming to World of Warships (at least, not in the way you might be thinking), their influence can definitely be felt. Both iconic movie staples will be seen represented in the ships below for a limited time only alongside playable commanders. Movie-themed patches, camouflages, flags, and more can also be seen in another film crossover that will kick off sometime in May. 

Representing Team Godzilla, wearing blue and weighing 41,217 tons, is the Japanese battleship Amagi. Representing Team Kong and weighing 37,484 tons is the USS North Carolina, battleship for Kong lovers. For console players, World of Warship: Legends players who choose Godzilla will have a unique battleship by the name of Heat Ray while the Kong fans will have a great counterpart in Primal, a battleship representing the creature's might. 

Author
Liana Ruppert

Game Infarcer: ESA Announces E3 Legendary Edition

2 years 11 months ago

In lieu of another year without a “real” E3, the ESA has an announcement sure to appease fans of advertisements, industry in-jokes, and pre-alpha footage. The E3 Legendary Edition, which collects, updates, and remasters fan-favorite E3 moments throughout the years, is expected to be released in summer 2021.

E3 Legendary Edition features “up to 32 hours of content” for fans to enjoy. This includes Konami’s historic 2010 press conference, every appearance by Aisha Tyler, and G4’s entire archive of booth babe videos. Additionally, the ESA has confirmed the remaster will ship with 1,236 trailers debuted throughout the conference’s history, but this time uprezzed to 4K with HDR, meaning everything will assuredly look worse and muddier than developers originally intended.

Audio has received a complete overhaul, and in some cases, has been entirely re-recorded for the remaster, such as Mr. Caffeine’s “performance” from Ubisoft’s 2011 press conference now starring Nolan North. And finally, it’s not all old content: The ESA announced E3 Legendary Edition will launch with the names, addresses, and personal information of 250 new press members throughout the world, in addition to all the information it leaked in 2019. The E3 Legendary Edition: Limited Edition comes with an authentic undercooked pizza slice from the Los Angeles Convention Center.

“We hope gamers’ bodies are ready, because like a giant enemy crab, The E3 Legendary Edition™ is coming quicker than a Riiiidge Racer!” said Stanley Pierre-Louis, the CEO of the ESA, in a press release.

Author
Darth Clark

The Weird Background Art In Your Favorite Vintage Pokémon Cards Are Just Stock Images

2 years 11 months ago

Pokémon is a cultural phenomenon. The famed series has been adapted into multiple forms of media: television shows and movies, manga, and games. But who remembers collecting Pokémon card packs back in the day (long before the card game gained traction)? I do, although I never learned how to actually play. Apparently that uncanny background art from classic Pokémon cards — you know, the scenic environments with vast meadows and far off trees that never meshed well the cartoony aesthetic of the featured Pokémon — was just pulled from a collection of stock images.

Author
Jason Guisao

Outriders is suffering login issues on launch day

2 years 11 months ago

Outriders is suffering launch day login issues as a raft of problems have emerged.

People Can Fly's looter shooter launched today across PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S as well as straight into Xbox Game Pass and Google Stadia, and it is struggling to cope with the influx of players.

I've spent some time this evening stuck on the initial authentication screen, which has prevented me from playing at all. Eventually, you're presented with an "Internet Connection Error" message that lets you know you failed to connect to the Outriders servers. There's nothing to do after this point but try again.

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Frontier addresses Elite Dangerous: Odyssey alpha's tedious space taxis and murder planets

2 years 11 months ago

Elite Dangerous is currently in the throes of alpha testing its new Odyssey expansion, with pre-order players now able to put a limited version of the experience through its paces. Some of Odyssey's new features have proven more contentious than others at this early juncture, and Frontier has now moved to address some of its biggest pain points - including Odyssey's tortuous AI-piloted Apex Interstellar taxi service.

Apex Interstellar is chiefly intended to provide players who're enthusiastic about Odyssey's on-foot combat but less so about space flight with a means of getting round the galaxy without needing to pilot a ship of their own. It's an entirely reasonable idea in principle, but the reality is an excruciating bore, leaving players stuck in the passenger seat with nothing to do for many - often many, many, many - minutes at a time.

It's doubtful anyone would actively choose to use Odyssey's space taxis in their current guise (least of all those seeking instant gratification thrills), but their rubbishness is exacerbated by the fact taxis are the only way to get around in the current alpha phase, leading to considerable criticism over the last few days.

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Overfall has been removed from some players' Steam libraries

2 years 11 months ago

Overfall, a strategy role-playing game released in 2016, has been revoked from some player's Steam libraries due to the developer, they allege, being "scammed" by an unnamed publisher. The issue is that some of those keys ended being sold to players on Fanatical, a legitimate Steam key seller, and some players who bought the game from there have lost access to the game, too.

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Author
Graham Smith

Discord has launched a Clubhouse-style audio channel feature

2 years 11 months ago

Discord, the gaming chat platform, has added a new feature called Stage Channels. These are described as "a special type of voice channel... where some people can talk and others can listen as the audience." It's essentially the defining feature of Clubhouse, the invite-only mobile app that briefly attracted media attention earlier this year.

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Author
Graham Smith

After 25 Years, Story of Seasons Still Wants to Capture the Same Feeling

2 years 11 months ago

In 1996's Harvest Moon, a young man inherited a run-down farm from his grandfather, built it back up again into a thriving ranch with chickens and cows and crops, and married a young woman from the nearby town. In doing so, Harvest Moon’s developers effectively created the farming sim genre.

2021’s installment of Story of Seasons may have changed name (having ditched the Harvest Moon moniker when its developers broke off from publisher Natsume) but the plotline and gameplay goals have changed very little. In fact, rather like its protagonists' farms, it has nestled into a cozy repetition. And if you look to the genre the series pioneered as a source of comfort rather than novelty, like I do, that's just fine and dandy.

Hikaru Nakano has been with the series since before we knew it as Story of Seasons in North America, and has seen a run of farming games through numerous iterations. He first worked on the games as a designer for Harvest Moon 64 (which he says remains his favorite game in the series), and returned for other titles including Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland for PS2 and Harvest Moon: Magical Melody for the GameCube. As the series moved to the DS, he worked as assistant producer on Harvest Moon DS: Cute and as producer and director on Harvest Moon DS: Island of Happiness, among other games. And now, he's the director on both Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town and Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/23/story-of-seasons-pioneers-of-olive-town-review"]

There's a good reason, Nakano says, why 25 years of iterations have not resulted in drastic upheavals to what Story of Seasons is: at its core, that's just not what the series is about.

Author
Rebekah Valentine

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Sony Japan Studio Restructure Leads to Mass Exodus of Developers

2 years 11 months ago
Sony Japan Studio's ongoing restructure has led to a mass exodus of developers behind key PlayStation titles like Demon's Souls on PS5, Gravity Rush, Bloodborne, The Last Guardian, and more. In February, Sony confirmed that PlayStation's Japan Studio will be re-organized around Team ASOBI, the development unit behind Astro's Playroom. First-party development elsewhere in the studio will likely cease or be scaled back, and other departments such as localization, external production, and IP management will shift to PlayStation Studios. Since this news, several key members of Japan Studio have announced their departures from the company. Demon's Souls PS5 director Gavin Moore announced today he is leaving Sony after 24 years with the company. "After 24 years at Sony and 18 of those in Japan, yesterday was my last day at #JapanStudio. I will miss the great creative spirit and camaraderie of the studio that was a huge part of my life," Moore wrote in his farewell message. "Time to seek out new and exciting opportunities."

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Author
Matt T.M. Kim

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Game Infarcer Cover Retrospective: Fake Games Through The Years

1 year 11 months ago

Our April Fool's Day tradition around here is Game Infarcer – a parody magazine featuring fake games, pretend news,  and even a non-existent editor-in-chief. This year's edition went online today, including a wonderful illustration of Resident Evil IX by artist Zander Cannon. But if you've been reading Game Informer for a while, you know that this isn't the first time Zander has created the cover for Game Infarcer. In fact, this is the 16th consecutive year we've collaborated with him on this project. 

To celebrate such a long history, I got together with Zander, my colleague Ben Reeves, and former GI editor Jeff Cork to take a stroll down memory lane. The four of us worked together on the majority of these covers, so we traded stories about all 16 of them. In this retrospective, we share our recollections on all things Game Infarcer, from the origin of the core cover concepts to the technical details of creating the illustrations. 

Author
Joe Juba

The Uncharted Movie Has Been Delayed Again By One Week

2 years 11 months ago

Not to be outdone by Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the upcoming Uncharted movie has been hit with a delay of its own. That probably won’t mean much given the film wasn’t premiering until 2022 anyway, but, for whatever reason, Columbia Pictures has decided to push Nathan Drake’s big screen debut back by one week.

Uncharted will now premiere February 18, 2022. It was supposed to arrive February 11, a date that in itself was a delay from its March 2021 release. There's no official reason for the delay but Deadline speculates the decision was made to get the movie away from Super Bowl Sunday, which was recently confirmed to take place on February 13.

Author
Marcus Stewart

Remedy's Control demake for April Fools' is rad

2 years 11 months ago

Today is April 1, also known as April Fools' Day. Some companies make fake game announcements, others make real ones, and every piece of information is treated with incredible scrutiny.

The fake game announcement has been a classic in the games industry, and today, Remedy Entertainment joined in the fun by posting a trailer for a theoretical PlayStation demake of its 2019 game Control. These are fairly common, but Control is a really interesting game to choose—with lots of unique physics concepts to get around, and a style that's still fairly recognizable, even at the low poly-count.

I'd definitely play this version of Control for at least a little while; PlayStation aesthetic nostalgia aside, it's really neat to see the spaces of Control reimagined in this old look. Even without the ray tracing, the brutalist architecture of the Oldest House is imposing, and the idea of Jesse's supernatural powers like telekinetic tossing and flight in an older engine is pretty novel.

That's actually maybe the most bizarre part of this, is noticing some of the modern gameplay conventions that have evolved after the PlayStation's lifespan, demade into this era's visual space. The camera zooming in when the player aims down the sights, for example, or even just how the twin-stick aiming feels so different from other third-person shooters at the time. Watching this side-by-side with Syphon Filter or WinBack is wild.

Author
Eric Van Allen