December 2021

I don’t cry easily. That isn’t a brag; I just know that I’m built in such a way that I often feel disconnected from my emotions. In other words, it takes a powerfully constructed piece of storytelling to crack through my emotional outer bark. Life is Strange: True Colors is that kind of storytelling. Deck Nine’s affective adventure game didn’t just punch through my hard outer shell. It sliced through me like a hot iron.

True Colors isn’t an action-packed thrill ride, but its narrative is incredibly engrossing and hard to put down nonetheless. From the jump, players meet Alex Chen, a young woman re-entering society after a stint in a foster care center. As the game opens, Alex arrives in the small mountain town of Haven Springs, Colorado, to live with her brother. However, after Alex and her friends get caught in a mining demolition explosion, Alex is thrust into a larger corporate coverup that tears apart the lives of nearly everyone in town. Read more...

The animated film gets to the heart of the Colombian experience that many might overlook

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Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz are uneasy allies

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My soul for some peace, quiet, and oh, is that BBQ I smell?

The post Wytchwood’s Twisted Tale Conjures Up a Good Time appeared first on Siliconera.

The newest Triangle Strategy trailer looks at Frederica Aesfrost, Serenoa Wolffort’s fiance, and other members of the Aesfrost family.

The post Frederica Aesfrost Triangle Strategy Trailer Shared appeared first on Siliconera.

Matt Reeves’ upcoming reboot of The Batman is on the horizon, and to help everyone get excited for the return of the infamous comic book superhero, Warner Bros. Pictures has dropped a brand new trailer.

Go ahead and check out the new footage of the Caped Crusader’s fast-approaching pic down below:

Clocking in at just over two and a half minutes long, the new video sheds light on the relationship between the iconic Batman and Catwoman duo at the heart of the film as they team up to battle the conniving machinations of Paul Franklin Dano’s The Riddler.

Stepping into the sassy high-heels of the titular feline character is Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them star, Zoë Kravitz, the daughter of popular singer-actor, Lenny Kravitz.

From the looks of things, the Bat and the Cat will not only be working together, but sparks may also fly as the pair clearly have a lot of chemistry between them. That ol’ chestnut, eh?

Genshin Impact’s 2.4 update, Fleeting Colors in Flight, arrives on January 5th – that’s next week! This patch contains plenty of content, including the new area Enkanomiya and two new characters, Shenhe and Yunjin. Players can earn rewards including Intertwined Fates to draw characters and items via gacha, discover new cosmetic outfits, and collect some characters that aren’t always available in rotation, including Xiao, Ganyu, and Zhongli. You can check out the trailer for Fleeting Colors in Flight here. Which upcoming addition is your favorite?

This update includes the Lantern Rite celebrations (now locked in as an annual event and includes a web event called Enchanting Journey of Snow. If you haven’t participated in one of these web events yet, they can be played right in your browser and often just plop the rewards right into your account after you go through some dialogue or simple mini-games that expand upon the Genshin universe and lore.

Of course, the major addition here is the new playable area, Enkanomiya. Are you headed into Genshin Impact’s 2.4 update? Let us know in the comments!

Cblogs of 12/18 to 12/24/2021 –Siddartha85 shares their top gaming moments of this year. –Siddartha85 shares their second-best top gaming...

The post What was your favorite ‘gaming moment’ of 2021? appeared first on Destructoid.

‘Thank you for your continued patience’ Square Enix producer Naoki Yoshida has released a new statement announcing that upcoming RPG...

The post Final Fantasy XVI hit with production delay, more info in spring 2022 appeared first on Destructoid.

Geoff Keighley retconned Keanu’s game into his HOF

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Stop-motion animation is always a welcome holiday gift

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Perhaps it was an understatement when we said Cyberpunk was having its first “good day” when it creeped its way to the top of the Steam charts earlier this year. As it turns out, the beleaguered role-playing game, which has received a number of updates since its dumpster fire of a release, was quietly trucking along…

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The first issue will include a 71-page Kishibe Rohan one-shot manga.

The post JoJo Magazine Set Announced for 35th Anniversary of the Series appeared first on Siliconera.

New Pop Team Epic anime episodes are on the way, as season 2 of the show will be coming in 2022. There's a teaser trailer for it.

The post Pop Team Epic Season 2 Will Debut in 2022 appeared first on Siliconera.

Following the reveal of the move from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, Ashes of Creation developer Intrepid Studios released a new trailer.

The trailer showcases the same wintery biome revealed a few days ago, but this time in a more scenic and polished way, with epic music acting as the proverbial cherry on top.

You can check it out below.

Ashes of Creation is a very promising fantasy MMORPG coming to Windows PC. If you want to hear more, you can check out our hands-on preview from earlier this year.

Below you can read how the developers describe the game:

Experience an MMORPG where everything is permanently impacted
by your actions – explore, trade, build, and let the world take form. From your imagination through your will and into everyone’s reality, what you create will be the cornerstone of the next explorer’s ambition.

You’ll need to connect your DualSense controller to the mobile device to start. Afterward, it is pretty straightforward. The UI is direct and gives you access to a few things, such as how much battery life is on the controller, the ability to change the light color on the DualSense controller, and of course, play around with the triggers.

If you’ve been into tower defense fare at all in your gaming escapades, you’ve probably come across one of Ninja Kiwi’s bloons games. 2021 took things in a different direction from the incredibly popular Bloons 6 with a title that has a decidedly competitive slant, as two players battle it out in tower defense action. Tower defense games are all over the place, but the Bloons franchise has really taken off in the wake of an era of incredibly popular map mods that embraced the genre, many of which got started in Warcraft 3 or StarCraft. Dedicated tower defense games exist as well and are especially pervasive on mobile platforms, with titles from the Kingdom Rush franchise being notable. Anyway though, this time it’s all about the bloons! 

Over the last two decades, Edmund McMillen has made a name for himself in the game industry as one of the preeminent hitmakers in the independent development scene. Whether you're talking about his early days churning out cult-classic games with Adobe Flash or his mainstream success with titles like Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, McMillen is one of the greatest success stories to come out of the millennium’s early indie boom. And yet, through all this success, McMillen has felt like an outcast.

We sat down with McMillen for an extended conversation to learn about the unique path the artist and designer took to become one of the most successful independent game developers of this era.

New Paths to Newgrounds

McMillen has long felt like he doesn’t belong. Hailing from Watsonville in Santa Cruz County, California, McMillen mostly grew up with his grandmother. His mom’s side of the family, including his grandmother, consisted of devout Catholics, while members of his dad's side were what he called “A.A. Christians,” or born-again Christians recovering from addiction.

“I didn’t fit in really anywhere in my family,” says McMillen. “I just felt like a giant weirdo. The closest thing to me was my grandma. Nobody else really had any interest in art. My dad sang in a Journey cover band, but other than singers, there weren’t artists, illustrators, or creative types.”

Ever wanted to play a 4v1 asymmetrical horror game where four survivors face off against a killer? Wait, that’s called Dead by Daylight. Propnight essentially combines the asymmetrical antics of Dead by Daylight with PropHunt, which creates a different experience entirely, as survivors can turn into books, chairs, hot dogs, crates, giant pianos and stuffed bears, and basically anything else in the environment. While the game has a lot of various features and mechanics that players will recognize from Dead by Daylight such as the survivors working on various objectives to open the exit gates, the game has a decidedly different tone. While games can still get plenty sweaty, it’s hard to take things seriously when players are possessing giant pigs and jumping on the killer’s head, stunning them, and then hopping into a backpack and hiding on a bookshelf.

Whether getting together with old friends or settling down for a weekly family game night, great tabletop games bring people together and ­create lasting memories. Even during a year that many game nights had to be put off or canceled, game makers continued to release some remarkable new projects.

Here are 10 of the best games of 2021, from cooperative party experiences to challenging asymmetric strategy competitions and everything in-between.

For more on some of the best tabletop games of recent years, head to our Top of the Table hub and explore its recommendations.

7 Wonders Architects
Publisher: Repos Production

The original 7 Wonders is phenomenal, but its manifold strategies can intimidate newcomers. Architects simplifies and streamlines without losing the core fun. Players work to build a wonder of the ancient world using a straightforward card selection as the central mechanic. Attractive cardboard pieces represent the landmark as it takes shape. Add in the playful art and cleverly designed components, and Architects claims a spot as one of the best new gateway games in years. 

The new Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty expansion will be released on February 18, 2022.

The post Metal Gear Artist Yoji Shinkawa Creates Art for Magic: The Gathering Card appeared first on Siliconera.

Hello! Over the next few days we're going to be going back over some of our favourite games and moments and themes and whatnot from this very strange year. We hope you enjoy looking back with us!

It started with a reveal that had the internet thirsting; it ended with voice actress Maggie Robertson winning best performance at The Game Awards. 2021 was the year of Lady Dimitrescu.

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Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What do all shapes consider to be their father figure?

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Today Square Enix released a new group of trailers of the upcoming mobile JRPG Bravely Default Brilliant Lights.

The trailers introduce well-known characters from a number of Bravely Default Games that will appear in Brilliant Lights.

We see Selene and Anihal from Bravely Default II, Heinkel, Khint, and Victoria from Bravely Default, Liz from Bravely Default: Fairy’s Effect, and Janne and Nikolai from Bravely Second: End Layer.

The new trailers follow the previous batches showing Tiz Arriorm, Agnès Oblige, Edea Lee, and Ringabel from the original Bravely Default, and Seth, Gloria Neu Musa, Adelle Ein, and Elvis Lesley from Bravely Default II.

Not only do we get a brief introduction of every character, but we also see actual gameplay, providing an idea of how it’ll work, including the iconic Brave & Default system adapted to touch controls.

You can check out the trailers below.

One will be a "big" title, while the other will be "new and challenging."

The post Hideo Kojima Teases Two New Games In Development appeared first on Siliconera.

It's sometimes difficult finding the right monitor, where you want to balance a high-resolution that's above the standard 1080p HD fare, but also capable of taking your gaming experience above and beyond with extra features. The 27" Dell S2721DGFA monitor means you no longer have to make a choice anymore, and it's down to just £299 at Amazon right now, a fifth off its usual RRP.

First off, let's state the obvious: it's a QHD 1440p IPS screen. That means you're getting the sweet-spot between standard full HD and 4K resolutions, with excellent viewing angles and clarity. Many mid-range and high-powered GPUs can take advantage of this resolution when it comes to gaming, as well as consoles, with many games optimised for QHD. Next up: it has a 165Hz refresh rate. This means the screen can keep up with games that are optimised for fast gameplay, such as online shooters and e-sports games. Not only is this perfect for many hardcore PC gamers, but even games like Call of Duty on the new Xbox Series or PS5 consoles support up to 120 frames a second. This translates to you not missing out on any details that are happening at high-speed, giving you an advantage over others.

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Last night on Japanese television, there was a three-hour special to rank the hundred most popular video games of all time as voted by over 50,000 people in Japan.

Since this poll has such a huge sample, the TV Asahi results are probably a fairly accurate barometer of people’s current gaming tastes in the country.

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It wasn’t that long ago that Hwang Dong-hyuk didn’t seem up for more Squid Game, telling Variety, “It is quite tiring just thinking about it.” Then, the show exploded in popularity around the world, becoming Netflix’s most watched series. The creator soon warmed to the idea of doing a second season. Now, Hwang says…

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The Fire Emblem Heroes New Year units for 2022 include Reginn, Fafnir, Lyre, and a Duo unit with Dagr and her sister Nott.

The post Fire Emblem Heroes New Year Units Include Reginn, Fafnir appeared first on Siliconera.

Diablo has, for good reasons, become a shorthand for describing the flavour of gothic, grimdark fantasy setting in games, where pus-filled demonic hordes and rotting, undead corpses scour a hellish cathedral looking for unwitting adventurers. For all its wretched decay, however, the series still feels like an indulgence to be savoured. Its clickiness and abhorrent sights make the games endlessly gratifying, and masterful butchery of fiends eases most players into a comfortable rhythm. And part of that appeal lies in the macabre yet captivating fantasy it so deftly peddles — all that blood, gore and guts really make for a grisly setting that’s nearly impossible to look away from.

Tainted Grail: Conquest conveys the same sense of blight and doom in its dark fantasy universe — one that’s a reimagining of Arthurian legends — but also ups the ante with a huge wallop of Slay The Spire’s roguelike, deck-building elements.

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Hello! Over the next few days we're going to be going back over some of our favourite games and moments and themes and whatnot from this very strange year. We hope you enjoy looking back with us!

It has been, the story goes, a quiet sort of year for video games. After the fun and festivities of 2020, which against the backdrop of a pandemic somehow saw two new consoles being released, there's been a lethargy to 2021 - a Boxing Day fug as we're caught in the liminal buffer between the big launch year and 2022, where every big release has seemingly been delayed to.

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Back in 2018, former Riot Games employees Melanie McCracken and Jes Negrón filed a class action suit against the League of Legends publisher over endemic gender-based discrimination and fostering a “men-first” environment. A settlement has now been reached.

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Yesterday, a press release from the Department of Fair Employment & Housing (DFEH) confirmed that Riot Games has agreed to settle the 2018 lawsuit filed against the company for gender discrimination. Riot will pay over $100 million to “remedy violations against approximately 1,065 women employees and 1,300 women contract workers.”

The lawsuit followed an article written by Kotaku in 2018 which described a culture of sexism at Riot Games, the publisher behind successful games League of Legends, and Valorant.

Riot first agreed to pay $10 million in 2019, but its activities were blocked by the DFEH with a court filing, which argued the sum should be as high as $400 million.

The full terms of the revised settlement (with the DFEH) are as follows:

Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage features lots of songs to play with no stamina systems in the way.

The post Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage Makes it Easy to Enjoy Miku Songs appeared first on Siliconera.

SNK Character Designer Tomohiro Nakata revealed Maxima will know a new move in KOF XV and his design was "a nightmare to get right."

The post Maxima Will Get a New Move in KOF XV appeared first on Siliconera.

Today Kadokawa Games released a brand new trailer of its upcoming mecha strategy RPG titled Relayer.

The trailer showcases the Ice Planet mission that was playable at a recent demo event in Tokyo, and interestingly, it’s shown running both on PS5 and PS4, so you can see the differences.

We already know that the PS4 version runs at 30 FPS and is displayed at a lower resolution compared to the PS5 version.

You can check it out below.

Relayer will release simultaneously worldwide (including Japan, Asia, North America, and Europe) on March 24, 2022, for PS5 and PS4.

If you’d like to learn more about the game, you can check out an official description below.