January 2022

Today Square Enix hosted a new livestream dedicated to PlatinumGames’ upcoming online game Babylon’s Fall.

This time around we take a look at a new area called “Bandits’ Corridor” including several bosses.

We then get an explanation of the seasonal flow of the game. It’ll launch with campaign missions and another kind of content that the developers call “Squaamish” with the purpose of gathering materials and defeating infamous enemies.

We also see plenty of gameplay of this mode in an area called “Fire Mountain Corridor.” New content for both the campaign and this mode will be added seasonally with updates.

Then there is another mode called “Siege” that will be introduced in the next livestream. This is weekly content and lets players acquire special items.

Incidentally, we hear that the release of a demo is being considered and a solution similar to a battle pass will be available even if details haven’t been provided yet.

On top of that, items you’ll have to pay for are exclusively cosmetic, and none of them affects the balance of the game.

You can watch it all below.

Developer Rebellion has today teased its upcoming sequel Sniper Elite 5 with a new cinematic trailer that both highlights its WW2 French setting and the addition of an all-new game mode called Invasion.

Here’s how Rebellion tees up the mode via its Steam page:

Invade another player’s Campaign as an Axis sniper and engage in a deadly game of cat and mouse, providing a new dimension to the challenge as you stalk your prey. Alternatively, as Karl you can call for assistance and have a second sniper drop in to help you out of a tricky situation.

For those not up to speed with Sniper Elite 5, here’s its description:

The latest installment in the award-winning series, Sniper Elite 5 offers unparalleled sniping, tactical third-person combat and an enhanced kill cam. Fight your way across the most immersive maps yet, with many real-world locations captured in stunning detail, and an improved traversal system that lets you explore more of them than ever before.

France, 1944 – As part of a covert US Rangers operation to weaken the Atlantikwall fortifications along the coast of Brittany, elite marksman Karl Fairburne makes contact with the French Resistance. Soon they uncover a secret Nazi project that threatens to end the war before the Allies can even invade Europe: Operation Kraken.

Earlier today, Netflix revealed a brand new teaser trailer for its upcoming film Adam by Eve: A Live in Animation. A unique blend of live-action, 3DCG, & 2D, the film follows a young high school student, Aki, and the strange adventure she has with her best friend, Taki

You can check out the official synopsis and teaser trailer for Adam by Eve: A Live in Animation, courtesy of Crunchyroll & Netflix, below:

Today Square Enix and Nintendo released a new English trailer of the upcoming HD-2D turn-based strategy game Triangle Strategy.

The trailer focuses on introducing one of the main characters of the game, Frederica Aesfrost, princess of the Aesfrost kingdom and fiance of the hero Serenoa Wolffort.

You can watch it below.

Triangle Strategy releases for Nintendo Switch on March 4, 2021. If you want to learn more, you can watch the latest gameplay, another promotional video, plenty more gameplay, and the latest screenshots, and read the official description below.

Speaking to IGN, CEO Tim Morten explained the several ways that influx of money will be put to good use. First and foremost, it will help Frost Giant make the RTS it has always been aiming to create.

Strategy games have been around longer than most, but they still remain niche to most audiences. Some can be pretty intimidating to jump into as a new strategy player. There are resources to manage, armies to control, big decisions to make, many hours of gameplay, and more. However, once you dig into this genre, you’ll find some of the most rewarding gameplay the hobby has to offer. Every victory feels hard-earned. Every loss feels fair (okay, they don’t always feel fair). And failing becomes a chance to learn how you might play better next time. 

This year is fantastic for strategy fans and those looking to finally dive into the expansive genre for the first time. That’s because nearly a dozen great entries we’re excited about are on the way. Of course, there are more, but the following 11 are the ones we’re raring to play most. Here are Game Informer’s most anticipated strategy games of 2022, listed chronologically by release date.

I've been playing video games and reading comic books for as long as I can remember. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I never stop talking about them, which is why I started From Panel to Podcast, a new weekly show that discusses all things comic book.

This podcast will tell you which comic books you should be reading each week, and also dives into the latest developments for comics in video games, movies, and television shows. We'll even discuss comic book collectibles and anything we think you should know about that pertains to this entertainment medium.

I'm joined each week by my dear friend Philip Hoff, who knows comic books better than anyone and has been collecting them with me for over two decades. We often go on comic hunts together, looking to complete runs and discover the next big series to gush about.

We found one such series recently and share our findings in this debut episode. We also dive deep into Insomniac Games' upcoming Wolverine game, and share thoughts on our favorite video games of all time.

You can listen to the first episode below. In the weeks ahead, new episodes will debut every Tuesday and will appear everywhere where podcasts are available.

Overwatch’s annual Lunar New Year event, inspired by the Chinese celebration of the day, kicks off today. From now until February 15, you can enjoy a pair of event brawls and unique weekly challenges to unlock some spiffy new skins.

Azetch Forgotten Gods, the third-person action game that blends Mesoamerican culture with sci-fi trappings, arrives on March 10. Nintendo fans may remember the game’s debut during last April’s Indie World showcase, and it comes from the team behind Mulaka.

Aztech unfolds in a technologically advanced Tenochtitlan. Instead of lying in ruin as it does in real-life, Aztech’s version of the Aztec city never came into contact with Europeans, allowing it to flourish. That doesn’t mean it’s safe from harm, however; an ancient and divine threat looms, ready to strike. It’s up to Achtli, a cybernetically enhanced warrior wielding a giant mechanical fist called the Lightbringer, to protect Tenochtitlan. In addition to pummeling foes with the Lightbringer, the rocket-powered glove also lets you propel Achtili across environments meaning Azetch is as much about mobility as it is action. Check out the latest trailer below. 

You can play Aztech Forgotten Gods on PlayStation and Xbox consoles, Switch, and PC.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card you’ve been after to complete your “Extreme Gaming PC” build is still in short supply but finally getting slightly cheaper. That’s thanks to a drop in crypto mining participation as the value of Bitcoin and other blockchain currencies plummet ahead of what some analysts are…

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Last week, we reported that the Nintendo Switch Online’s emulation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time saw a small graphical tweak with the service’s latest update. It signaled potential good news for the quality of emulated games on NSO, which players have decried for some time. In another promising sign, fans…

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It’s one thing to beat Halo Infinite on its highest difficulty, where enemy ammunition packs an extra punch. It’s another thing entirely to waltz your way through the shooter’s future-Brutalist architecture with such grace that your enemy’s firepower makes zero difference whatsoever.

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When I woke up this morning, I did not expect to catch an eyeful of Final Fantasy VII villain Sephiroth’s perky nipples. Yet here we are. Life always finds a way, you know? Here’s FantasyToys’ life-size Sephiroth bust for your viewing pleasure.

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So, the gimmick with Aniplex, Disney, and f4samurai’s Twisted Wonderland is people are in a high school where iconic Disney villains are admired. That means people like the Queen of Hearts, Hades, Jafar, and Scar are heralded as “The Legendary Seven.” Each one has a dorm tied to them. Every guy is based on a villain somehow. For example, Floyd and Jade Leech are based on Ursula’s eels Flotsam and Jetsam. But while the idea is “guys based on bad guys,” the Twisted Wonderland characters often really aren’t bad guys. Rather, there are a lot of moments where they’re good people and even heroic.

One of the first “good guy” characters people will meet in Twisted Wonderland is Deuce Spade. (He’s based on a Alice in Wonderland spade card soldier.) The player runs into him when pursuing the Heartslabyul first year Ace Trappola, who got into trouble with them and Grim and is supposed to take part in a window-cleaning punishment. Deuce helps you stop Ace from evading punishment. His goal is established as trying to be an honor roll student and succeed. He’s generally level-headed and amiable. Granted, as a member of the cast in this sort of game, he does have a side. There are times when he’ll ask for things like coffee from the player in exchange for doing the right thing. But he’s generally a good person.

Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Diablo developer Blizzard Entertainment has revealed it's working on a "brand-new survival game" set in a "whole new universe".

The news comes as Activision Blizzard continues to reel from the shocking allegations it fostered a company culture where sexual harassment, assault, and inappropriate behaviour were able to thrive, with Blizzard Entertainment itself being called a "breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women" in a State of California lawsuit filed last year.

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If you've got yourself a load of new games over the holiday period or in the January sales, and haven't got enough space in your PC or PS5 to install them all - upgrading it with an SSD is a great solution. Not only can it give you more storage, but it can improve loading times too.

Good computer memory keeps getting more affordable, but high-speed and high-capacity solid state drives can still be pricey. Fortunately, some of the best SSDs can be found on sale with big savings.

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Blizzard is hiring across multiple departments including art, design, and engineering. Among the open positions are jobs for Environment Artist, Senior Character Artist, Senior Concept Artist, Level Designer, and Software Engineers for Engine, Audio, Server, and Tools.

Alongside the job listings are two pieces of artwork, one of two people from what looks like the modern-day crossing over from modern civilization into a fantasy world, and the other of some kind of hunter dressed in a fur cap and armor. It’s unclear if these artworks are meant to illustrate the tone of the project, or are meant to portray potential themes.

Blizzard manager Mike Ybarra tweeted that he’s “played many hours of this project with the team” already, meaning the game could be further along in development.

We have already covered some of the changes coming in Super Animal Royale version 1.3 such as the BCG weapon and the Hamster Ball nerf, but that’s absolutely not all there is to this update.

With the Year of the Super Tiger event now started, Super Animal Royale players will be seeing red envelopes during regular games of any mode. Similar to how candy corn and candy canes were in past events, the red envelopes you earn during the game can be cashed in after for themed prizes. Year of the Super Tiger will goo from January 25 to February 15.

The only difference is now there doesn’t seem to be an associated LTM (limited-time mode) to go along with envelope farming.

To celebrate the new year, there are also four new Super Tiger breeds being added:

• Super Golden Tiger
• Super Toy Tiger
• Super Bengal Tiger
• Super Lunar Tiger

The S.A.W. Bamboo Resort location in Super Animal Royale has also seen some changes:

• The beavers have moved 2021’s Super Ox statue out of Bamboo Resort and into storage at Beaver Construction HQ, and replaced it with a new Super Tiger statue!
• You’ll also find a new portrait of the tiger on the wall in the resort next to all the previous years’ animals.
• The entrance gates are also now adorned with a new Spring Festival Couplet for the new year, provided again by the Chinese SAR community!

To just name a few Super Animal Royale gameplay updates (full list here):

Today NIS America revealed a new trailer of the western release for North America and Europe for FuRyu’s school JRPG Monark, on top of releasing a playable demo.

The trailer focuses on the story, while the demo lets you play through chapter 1 of the game.

On top of that, you can also transfer your save data to the release version when it launches. It’s available for PS5 and PS4. The Nintendo Switch version should also become available soon, while a PC version of the demo has not been announced (while the listing on Steam for the game itself is available)

You can watch the trailer below.

If you’re unfamiliar with Monark, it’s a school JRPG developed by a team composed of multiple Shin Megami Tensei series veterans.

Yesterday night Square Enix released the “final” trailer of Team Ninja’s Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Well… It turns out that it wasn’t quite so final. They just released another.

Today’s trailer focuses more on gameplay and it basically explains all you need to know to face combat in the game and kill Chaos.

You can check it out below.

Cities: Skylines' Airports DLC is out now. It lets you build your own airports within your cities, placing down terminals, taxi lanes, customising the plane liveries and so on. It also comes alongside a free update for the base game which expands some substantial city customisation options.

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Blizzard have announced they're making a survival game set in an "all-new universe." There's not much information on it bar two pieces of concept art, but they're looking for artists, designers and engineers to join its development team.

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Blizzard Entertainment has announced a survival game set in an “all-new universe” and it announced it in a very odd way: a job posting. 

The official Blizzard Twitter account posted a job listing, asking would-be applicants to join the team in writing its next chapter. That “next chapter” is a survival game set in an all-new universe and if the art posted with it is any indication, it’s definitely set in a fantasy world. While it’s clearly not a World of Warcraft-related game (since it’s in a new universe and not an existing one), it definitely feels at home for the developer of those games. 

Palworld made us do multiple double-takes when it first came to our attention last summer. At first, it looks like any other Pokémon-inspired title. Cute, colorful, plenty of monster catching. And then the main character busts out a realistic assault rifle and starts wasting enemies alongside his adorable companions. In short, it looks amazing, and a new trailer reminds us of that fact.

The game comes from Japanese developer Pocketpair and is a multiplayer open-world survival game where players befriend creatures called Pals. You can journey together as equals or use them as transportation. You can also eat them, exploit them for labor, or force them to enact your destructive agendas. Pals can be captured and traded with other players, and you can breed them too. 

Palworld is harsher than it looks, sporting unforgiving weather conditions, scarce resources, not to mention illegal poachers. There’s also plenty of farming, crafting, and construction, with players able to build houses or even rocket ships. In a dark twist, you can even build factories and put your adorable critters to work assembling guns and other tools. Palworld’s combat features over-the-shoulder style shooting where you’ll mow down poachers as well as hostile Pals. Yes, this is a real video game. Check out the latest look at the game below.

Whether you're a serious or casual gamer, or spend a lot of time at your desk typing, having a good keyboard is really important. With another 11 months of 2022 ahead of us, it's a good idea to make those extra upgrades to your desk set up to help with productivity and in your downtime.

Are you someone who spends a lot of time typing and doing tasks that involve a lot of numbers? If so, you'll also want to have a full-size keyboard with mechanical switches so you can make use of the number keys and have a pleasant typing experience.

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Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel on PC

Yu-Gu-Oh! Master Duel is another free-to-play entry in the long-running card-battling franchise, and while it may be a bit barebones at the moment, the game still provides just enough engaging core features to keep you building decks and battling friends, the AI, or other players for hours on end.

The last gacha-style game in the series was Duel Links, which launched back in 2016. Master Duel is here to shake up the Duel Links formula by removing the quick Speed Duel format and bringing back some more standard TCG rules that most fans are familiar with.

Life Points are back up to 8,000, more monsters, spells, and traps can be played, and decks can contain far more cards overall than they could in Duel Links. It can actually be a bit overwhelming at first if you’re someone like me who hasn’t played Yu-Gi-Oh! seriously since childhood, but the game does its best to ease you in with the Solo mode.

The Sims 4 is bringing the influential style of iconic Brazilian superstar entertainer-activist Pabllo Vittar to the game, as a brand new collection of Create-A-Sims outfits and accessories has been revealed. In this upcoming pack, titled Carnaval Streetwear Kit, players can dress their characters in clothes that reflect the energy, self-expression, freedom, and vibrancy of one of the world’s biggest celebrations, Brazil’s Carnaval.

Don’t just take out word for it, though, as you can check out an official description and trailer for the kit below.

Today, Microsoft announced its financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2022, related to the period between October 1, 2021, and December 31.

The presentation included an update on the performance of the More Personal Computing business, which includes Microsoft’s gaming division and the Xbox brand. It’s worth mentioning that we might see the gaming business reported on its own in future announcements following the official creation of the Microsoft Gaming division under Phil Spencer.

You can check out all the relevant figures for the segment in the slides below.

Harley Quinn has really taken the DC world by storm in recent years, as Margo Robbie’s live-action performance in Birds of Prey, The Suicide Squad, and many more have brought life back to the character. But while her live-action adaptation has been turning heads, the animated version of the show has also been quite the hit.

Starring Kaley Cuoco, the animated series of Harley Quinn takes a much more gruesome and comedic look at the DC universe, as the show surrounds the misadventures of everyone’s favorite “Maid of Mischief” as she looks to strike out on her own and take over Gotham city.

So far, the series has gotten two seasons, with a third on the way, and it has been a laugh riot the entire way. Whether it’s Clayface’s terrible acting, Ivy’s love for all things plants, or a depressed Jim Gordan, the show has really pulled out all the stops in terms of exploring the comics in a unique and hilarious way.

To celebrate that, we’ve come up with a quiz that only true fans of the Harley Quinn animated series will be able to answer. So without further ado (imagine that with Clayface’s voice), let’s get started!

Three new Star Wars games are in development at EA. Respawn are leading the projects, working on "the next chapter" in the Star Wars Jedi story, an "all-new first-person shooter", and partnering with new studio Bit Reactor on a "new Star Wars strategy game."

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Vampire Survivors is an action RPG boiled down to its core. You walk around, you kill monsters, you level up, you get stronger, you kill more monsters. In place of story, an inventory, or even the need to fire and aim your own weapons, there is pixel art spectacle.

On my last life, I killed around 24,000 monsters in 30 minutes. I am hooked.

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Watch Dogs: Legion isn't getting anymore post-launch content. In an update from the development team, they say that the previous update was the last, and that 'seasons' in the online mode will soon begin to repeat.

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For Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, it’s about drive and it’s about power. He stays hungry and he devours, and today, it’s been revealed that he’s putting in the work (and the hours) to create another video game movie.

Johnson is no stranger to the silver screen, which is where his career resides these days following a great run in professional wrestling. In fact, he’s not even a stranger to being the star of video game adaptations on the silver screen, having starred in the 2005 Doom movie and 2018’s Rampage. In a new interview with Men’s Journal, Johnson said a video game adaptation he’s in will be announced this year, as reported by GamesRadar. 

“I can’t tell you which game in particular we’re doing, but there will be an announcement this year,” he said. “We’re going to bring one of the biggest, most badass games to the screen – one that I’ve played for years.” 

Ever since Microsoft announced it was buying Activision Blizzard in the biggest gaming deal ever, Sony fans have been desperate to see the PS5-maker respond in some way, as if the console giant had “big news” stored in a t-shirt cannon ready to be blasted out into the ravenous crowd at the drop of a hat. But the signs…

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Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is set to star in another video game movie, with the actor teasing it'll see one of the "biggest, most badass" games being brought to the big screen.

Johnson is, of course, no stranger to video game movies, having starred in an adaption of id Software's first-person shooter Doom back in 2005 (by most accounts not an especially good movie) and more recently appearing in 2018's live-action version of arcade favourite Rampage (see previous comment). And now Johnson has confirmed he's poised to help bring another poor, unfortunate video game franchise kicking and screaming into cinemas.

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Last September brought the surprise news that developer Adeline Software's much-loved action-adventure series Little Big Adventure was being revived - some 27 years after its debut - and now original co-creator Didier Chanfray has shared a little more of his plans.

The original Little Big Adventure - an evocative blend of platforming, puzzling, and exploration that charted the story of young hero Twinsen, on the run from evil dictator Dr. FunFrock - released back in 1994 and was followed by a sequel three years later. A third instalment, set to conclude the saga, has long been discussed by the series' creators but has so-far never arrived.

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