May 2021

On this week's episode of The Game Informer Show, we discuss a handful of the games we've been digging recently, including Biomutant, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Knockout City, and Portal Reloaded. We close the show by interviewing Arkane Studios' game director Dinga Bakaba (@DBakaba) and art director Sébastien Mitton (@mitmitman) about their newest project Deathloop and why they didn't just make another Dishonored. 

What happens when a crew of angsty students witness the apocalypse during a seemingly normal field trip? World’s End Club answers this question as it examines the various interpersonal relationships of its ensemble cast. However, janky platforming, predictable story beats, uninspired characters, and a forgettable soundtrack prevent World’s End Club from reaching the heights of the two franchises that directly informed it: Danganronpa and Zero Escape.

Dying Light 2 may have been revealed in 2018, but it was the game's demo the following year that put the industry on notice. Developer Techland's open-world zombie title blew people away with its promise of a deep, choice-filled world set on the backdrop of apocalyptic beauty. But then silence and scandal hit the studio, and Dying Light 2 has faded into the ether, with fans pining for any sort of information on the sequel to the fan-favorite title.

But today is a new day for those excited for this ambitious title. Techland is taking the pre-E3 digital stage (Pre-E3? Is this even a part of E3? Who knows?) and is showing off Dying Light 2 live for all to see. While the Polish developer has been relatively mum on what we'll be seeing today, the hope is that we will finally get a more substantive look at what fans will be playing when they finally get their hands on the game.

While we don't know what Techland will be showing, we do know who will be watching alongside you at Game Informer! Join zombie-enthusiasts Liana Ruppert and Alex Stadnik as they react live with you to all the big news, reveals, and whatever else Techland has up its sleeves.

This year marks the 30th anniversary for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise and as with any major anniversary milestone for a long-running franchise, fans want something to celebrate the glory days of the series. While 2017's Sonic Mania paid stellar tribute to the 2D days of Sega's spiny speedster, fans still love and play the games that gave Nintendo's popular plumber a run for his money back in the '90s. During today's Sonic Central presentation, Sega announced Sonic Origins to help players relive the early days of the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

As the name implies, Sonic Origins gathers the several of the series' earlier entries into one collection. While we don't have too many details at this time, Sega describes it as a "new compiled series." As you might imagine, Sonic Origins features the mainline Genesis games (Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles) as well as Sonic CD, which originally appeared on Sega CD. According to Sega, Sonic Origins will deliver a nostalgic experience with non-stop Sonic action and "fresh content." Outside of that, Sega teases fans that more information will be coming soon.

At SXSX 2019, head of Sonic Team Takashi Iizuka announced that the the next mainline Sonic the Hedgehog game from the flagship Sonic studio was underway. Since then, we've heard nothing about the project, and after today's Sonic Central stream, we know little more than the project is still in development. During today's video, Iizuka confirmed that the team behind Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces is still working on the next mainline Sonic game and gave us a tiny teaser video with a release window of 2022.

It's no secret that the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise had a particularly rough period in the late '00s and early '10s, but one of the most well-liked entries in the 3D series also came out during that time. Sonic Colors delivered fast-paced action, fun level design, and unique power-ups when it launched in 2010, becoming one of the better-received Sonic games of that era. Unfortunately, the title has been stranded on Wii since its launch, with no re-releases or availability through backwards compatibility. Thankfully, Sega and developer Blind Squirrel Entertainment have changed that by announcing Sonic Colors: Ultimate.

This remaster of the 2010 Wii game delivers the same thrills as the original did 11 years ago, but as with all remasters, you can expect some enhancements. The visuals have been upscaled, the controls and core gameplay have been refined, and players can even tackle an all-new mode. In the brand new Rival Rush mode, Sonic goes head-to-head with Metal Sonic. If you can outrun your robotic rival, you earn rewards.

Ahead of the Dying Light 2 showcase that is planned later today, Dying Light: Platinum Edition is available now. With the sequel on the way, players that have not yet experienced what this Techland adventure has to offer have the chance to do so in the best way possible now. 

So what comes in the Platinum Edition, exactly? Players can expect to get the base game itself and all four DLC, added weapons, and seventeen skin bundles. For those ready to dive in, it's available now at a heavily discounted rate for $24.99 through Xbox Live, though it looks like it's still the normal price of $99 through the PlayStation Store, at least at the time of publishing. 

In addition to announcing slightly bonkers Nintendo 3DS laptops today, Acer have also unveiled their new super-slim Swift X laptop. Until now, Acer's Swift line-up have been decidedly everyday laptops, offering ultraportable convenience in a thin and light form factor. The new Swift X still does that in spades, weighing just 1.39kg and measuring 17.9mm thick. Except this time, Acer have crammed an Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti GPU inside it, giving this super slim laptop some proper gaming credentials.

Read more

Y’all! There’s a new Sonic game coming in 2022! Sega’s also releasing a remaster of Sonic Colors and a Sonic Origins collection.

Read more...

Following up on cases built for players of Rainbow Six and World of Warcraft, NZXT’s latest non-combustible custom CRFT gaming cast is a striking ode to Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla that’s absolutely gorgeous when it’s filled with PC components. Wanna see?

Read more...

World's End Club is the big focus this week on the Switch eShop, and one of the few featured games in a sea of oddities.

The oddest is easily Spy Alarm, which gives off extremely '90s "your sibling will get caught breaking in your room" vibes. For $10, "Spy alarm transmits an invisible infra-red beam from IR Camera at the bottom of the right Joy-Con, if someone or something crosses the beam, the beams bounce back to the IR Camera which then sounds the alarm."

It's from Sabec, the same publisher who did the Switch "calculator."

Resident Evil Village is on its way to becoming one of the fastest-selling titles in Capcom history. The super-grim sequel has already raked in over four million shipments and digital sales in its first 19 days, comprised of figures taken from PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Stadia platforms.

For the sake of comparison, previous sequel Resident Evil 7: Biohazard popped the four million mark around 10 months after its release, while 2019 remake Resident Evil 2 rolled out five million copies in just under a year. While the quality of each title is subjective, there's no denying that Village enjoyed far more viral/pop culture global marketing than many of the series' recent releases, which has no doubt paid off in spades for Capcom.

Dragon Star Varnir will soon be heating things up for Nintendo Switch owners this side of the pond. As announced by Idea Factory International, the scaly anime JRPG, which launches on the Nintendo platform in Japan today, will be winging its way west in time for the summer season.

It's been a hot minute since we last talked about Dragon Star Varnir, which launched on PS4 in 2018, before receiving a PC port a year later. The high-fantasy adventure tells the story of a world where witches and dragons have been outlawed, and are being summarily hunted down by the kingdom's knights. One such knight has a change of heart, however, after being saved from certain death by a coven of young witches, who bestow upon him the powers of our fire-breathing friends. Now working alongside the coven, our hero fights to protect the witches from their oppressors, while coming to terms with his powerful new abilities.

Supermassive Games is finishing up the third horror-adventure game in The Dark Pictures Anthology this year, and while I was a little late to Man of Medan, I'm hooked now. I want to play all of these games right when they come out, even if they can't quite live up to the fan-favorite legacy of Until Dawn.

From a ghost ship labyrinth in Man of Medan to a foggy witch town fever dream in Little Hope, there's always something out there slinking around in this spooky character-choice-driven series. In the next standalone chapter, House of Ashes, we'll be stalked by an "inhuman enemy threat" in a buried temple.

Surprisingly, the game is set in Iraq in 2003 — the United States is looking for chemical weapons, and this can only end badly. But while the conflict rages above ground, something ancient stirs below.

Can't get enough Sonic retro compilations? Well, Sega can't either!

Later this year Sega will release Sonic Origins, which packages together Sonic 1, 2, 3, Sonic and Knuckles, and Sonic CD. "More info will be coming later in the year," but for now, we just know it exists. Sonic Mania and Team Sonic Racing are also available now on Amazon Luna, and Sonic Forces and the aforementioned other two games are coming to PlayStation Now.

That's basically it! Now you can argue about which classic Sonic game was the best all over again with new people in your life.

It's Sonic stream day, and does it feel like E3 is here already? Because it's kind of here.

In what might be the biggest news of the week, Sega has announced that Sonic Colors is getting a remaster. Described as "better than ever," the re-release is called "Sonic Colors Ultimate," and will arrive on September 7. It's slated for PC (Epic Games Store) PS4, Xbox One [Series X], and Switch: and will have "baby Sonic keychain" physical order bonuses.

Oh, and it's also getting an animation collaboration! It's called "Rise of the Wisps," and the first episode is coming this summer. Roger Craig Smith is returning to reprise his role, as we learned recently.

If you didn't experience World of Warcraft's Wailing Caverns dungeon back in the day, odds are you got a chance to see what all of the fuss is about in WoW Classic.

It's an early dungeon, to be sure, but it's one of the more memorable labyrinthine layouts in WoW history. Back when dungeons were basically mazes the players had to figure out as a meta-puzzle, for better or worse. Now it's coming to Hearthstone.

Announced today by Blizzard, this 66-card "mini-set" will contain four legendary cards, one epic card (x2), 14 rare cards (x2), and 16 common cards (x2). It hits the store on June 3, and will go for either $14.99 (at which point you can buy the set) or 2000 gold.

One big gimmick of the set involves summoning an army of 2/2 tokens with various abilities, but spell schools will also be involved, and the legendary cards are drawn straight from Wailing Caverns lore.

Note that this mini-set isn't going to be resetting the season (or the tavern [season] pass). It's part of the same formula as past years, where mini-sets just shake up the meta in a minor way without completely disrupting it. You still have some time to finish your pass.

XSEED shared a look at the Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town Windswept Falls Expansion Pack characters like Felicia and new outfits.

The post Felicia, Neil, Dunhill, and Hina Head to Pioneers of Olive Town appeared first on Siliconera.

Olympic Games Tokyo 2020: The Official Video Game is going to include a Sonic the Hedgehog mascot costume for players to wear.

The post Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 Game Will Get a Sonic Costume appeared first on Siliconera.

Sega announced a Sonic Origins compilation collection that will include titles like Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic CD.

The post Sonic Origins Will Include Classic Games Like Sonic CD appeared first on Siliconera.

Known as Virtua Fighter esports in Japan, it will effectively replace Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown.

The post Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown Also Coming to Arcades in Japan appeared first on Siliconera.

Sega announced it will release Sonic Colors Ultimate, complete with Sonic the Hedgehog movie pre-order bonuses and content, in September.

The post Sonic Colors Ultimate Will Appear in September 2021 appeared first on Siliconera.

When people play Lost Judgment, they'll also be able to pop into any of the in-game arcades to play the Sonic the Fighters fighting game.

The post Sonic the Fighters Will Be in Lost Judgment appeared first on Siliconera.

Founded by Emily Greer and Shelby Moledina, Double Loop Games plans to use the additional funds to expand its team and continue development of its first game for mobile. ...

In this 2018 GDC session, Naoto Ohshima & Hirokazu Yasuhara, two of the minds behind the original Sonic the Hedgehog, discuss their perspectives on the creation of the seminal game franchise. ...

Sonic's 30th anniversary livestream has come and gone, leaving a big blue streak in its wake, and while it wasn't perhaps the most revelatory of showings, Sega did at least confirm the previously rumoured Sonic Colors remaster and retro Sonic collection - as well as providing the tiniest teases of Sonic's next major game.

Starting with the remaster, it's called Sonic Colors Ultimate and will be heading to PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC (exclusively via the Epic Games Store) on 7th September this year.

As those who've played the 2010 original will know, Sonic Colors transports the iconic mascot to Dr. Robotnik's interstellar theme park for a familiar blend of appropriately high-speed into-the-screen and side-on platforming, with the hedgehog able to access handy new skills, such as a speed boost or the ability to drill underground, thanks to friendly Wisps.

Read more

After a teen movie on a haunted boat and a historical horror featuring witch trials, Supermassive Games will serve up something very different again for the next entry in its Dark Pictures Anthology series, House of Ashes.

Set in Iraq during the latter days of its most recent US invasion, this third standalone horror chapter is a claustrophobic monster story with a modern war backdrop: The Descent by way of Zero Dark Thirty. Its cast of characters is led by CIA operative Rachel King, played by Ashley Tisdale, who arrives in Iraq as part of a bungled raid to find chemical weapons. Another playable character, Salim Othman, is a local Iraqi soldier.

Snippets I've seen from the game's introduction show Tisdale and crew touch down in Iraq only to find they've screwed up. Military radar had shown something underground which US intelligence, desperate to find WMDs, decided was a chemical weapons factory. Instead, the company simply finds Iraqi farmers and local soldiers. A firefight breaks out and, in the chaos, both sides find themselves tumbling down into the real source of those radar results. It's here House of Ashes is mostly set - in an impressive set of subterranean ruins, remnants of the Akkadian Empire, dating back 2200 years to the reign of king Naram-Sin.

Read more

Sony’s State of Play stream will offer a first look at PS5 gameplay

Continue reading…

Mario Kart 8 will debut in 2022

Continue reading…

Yakuza team continues its streak of reviving Sega arcade games

Continue reading…

‘It took us too long,’ Twitch says

Continue reading…

The briefest of teases for the biggest IPs

Continue reading…

Sony Interactive Entertainment targets growth beyond a ‘console-centric ecosystem.’

Continue reading…

Sonic the Hedgehog’s next adventure is coming to everything

Continue reading…

Sonic Origins will bundle Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD

Continue reading…

Sega’s bringing the 2010 game to PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One

Continue reading…

Though physical units may be sparse, the PlayStation 5 has had no shortage of amazing experiences since its launch late last year. From the icons such as Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales to the surprising and enthralling Returnal, there has been plenty for fans of Sony's hardware to geek out about over the last year, and Guerilla Games hopes to continue that hype train. 

Horizon Forbidden West, the sequel to the 2017 sci-fi marvel, has been on the minds of gamers ever since its first reveal in June of last year, and for good reason. The return to Aloy's story means one of futuristic spectacle, filled with memorable metal dinos and an engrossing open-world begging to be explored. The wait to know more has been arduous, but the Horizon-faithful are about to have their patience paid off.

The eagerly and often angrily-awaited sequel to Techland’s 2015 survival horror action-adventure game finally has a concrete release date. The gates to humankind’s final stronghold swing wide on December 7 when Dying Light 2 Stay Human arrives on PlayStations, Xboxes, and PC.

Read more...

Soon, rappers, jewelry enthusiasts, or nerds with money to burn can buy their own Sonic-themed diamond necklace. Tucked into today’s Sonic news stream was a gem (heh) of an announcement—a collaboration between Sega and jewelry maker King Ice to create four gold chains featuring the diamond-encrusted heads of beloved …

Read more...