January 2022

It’s hard to believe that BioWare‘s beloved MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, turns 11 years old this December, and though you’d be forgiven for thinking that a game from way back in 2011 would be beginning to lose steam, you’d in fact be way off the mark.

That’s right, the Edmonton and Austin-based studio are poised to deliver its Legacy of the Sith expansion for the popular action-RPG on Feb. 15, 2022 for PC, and to celebrate, the team has dropped a new story trailer to whet fans’ appetites.

Go ahead and check out the new story trailer for the Legacy of the Sith expansion down below:

Astonishingly, Legacy of the Sith will be the eighth expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic and will be the follow-up to 2019’s Onslaught DLC. It will continue the story of where Onslaught left off, so players will be busy trying to get their hands on the pesky Darth Malgus as he makes his way across the galaxy as an ongoing galactic conflict rages on.

The Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection releases today on PlayStation 5, and to mark the occasion, we thought we'd dig out some of our favourite pieces of work about the included games.

First, a quick recap. The Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is a double-pack of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, remastered for PlayStation 5. And you know what that means: fancy new technical bells and whistles.

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Hello! Pokémon Legends: Arceus is upon us at last, so we've put together a quick episode of our totally-not-sporadic Eurogamer Reviewscast, a series where we sit down with the author of one of our latest reviews and pick their brains about their time with game.

Joining me this time was two more of our resident Pokémon experts (we have a few), Eurogamer's deputy editor Tom Phillips, who's been abreast of all the many leaks around launch, and senior guides writer Lottie Lynn, who's already put together a massive amount of guides that you can find over in our lovely, dedicated Pokémon Legends Arceus walkthrough and guide hub.

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EA has collaborated with Brazilian drag artist Pabllo Vittar on a new Carnaval Streetwear Kit for The Sims 4.

The Create-A-Sims outfits and accessories are inspired by the vibrancy of Brazil's Carnaval event and street parties, as well as Vittar's own sense of style.

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Valorant developer Riot Games has been forced to clarify that its popular character Killjoy does not enjoy collecting NFTs.

"Whoopsie!" Riot wrote in an unusual statement published to Valorant's official German Twitter account last night (thanks, PC Gamer).

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A NetherRealm developer has teased Mortal Kombat 12 in a now-deleted tweet.

Jonathan Andersen, senior production manager at NetherRealm, tweeted the image below before scrubbing it 10 minutes later. But of course the internet spotted it and saved it for analysis (thanks, reddit!).

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Microsoft is reportedly working on a Monster Hunter style co-op game.

Developer Certain Affinity is behind the game, having previously collaborated on Halo and Call of Duty games among others.

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After more than 50 years, Sega has pulled out of the Japanese arcade business.

All of the company's remaining arcades will be sold to arcade company Genda Inc, which operates locations under the GiGo brand (thanks, Tojodojo).

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There's a new football video game - and it has some big names behind it.

UFL is in development at a studio called Strikerz Inc., and has supposedly been in the works since 2016. It's free with, as the developers say, "no mandatory payments or yearly fees."

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Welcome to The RPS Time Capsule, a new monthly feature we're putting together where every member of the RPS editorial team picks their favourite, bestest best game from a specific year and tells us why that game above all else deserves to be preserved in our freshly minted time pod. It might be that it's the best example of its genre, or it contains a valuable lesson for future generations. This month, we're travelling back to rescue eight games from 2010, and cor, what a good year that was. Too bad almost all of them will end up in the lava bin by the time we're done.

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Steam's Lunar New Year Sale started last night, a huge sidewide discount-o-rama with tens of thousands of games and things going cheap. If you forgot to buy something in Steam's last huge sidewide discount-o-rama a whole three weeks ago, or have received a new paycheque since then, hey! It's a big sale! Again! Splendid!

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Mech combat game Daemon X Machina launched as a Switch exclusive, came to PC in 2020, and is now free to keep if you grab it this week from Epic Games Store. It'll be gone after February 3rd, at which point it'll be replaced by Epic's next free game, Yooka-Laylee And The Impossible Lair.

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Following a stretch on Stadia, a platform so forgotten I didn't even know the game existed, a sequel to 2015's lovely Submerged is venturing onto PC and beyond. I'm often not interested in games which reflect my daily life but Submerged: Hidden Depths makes it look so pretty to lark about in water and explore the ruins of civilisation that sure, I'll do it in the game too. Check out the trailer below.

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Grapple Dog is one of those games I've been watching on Twitter for years. It's a 2D platformer in which you play as a dog with a grappling hook. Grappling hooks are the best thing in video games, and I am fully ready to swing through a colourful, cute platformer. To my infinite delight, Grapple Dog now has a release date: February 10th.

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When Death Stranding's PC pubishers announced in January that the expanded Death Stranding Director's Cut was indeed coming belatedly to PC, they neglected to mention whether they'd offer a cheaper upgrade. Seeing as the newness is very much not worth buying the game again, it was a weird omission. But, now they say they'll offer a £9/$10 upgrade from the base game, and announced a release date of the 30th of March. Right-o!

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Back in the mists of time of 2013, a bunch of Japanese developers got together to make a series of short 3DS games called the Guild series. Headed up by Ni No Kuni makers Level-5, it had some pretty big-name contributors: Keiji Inafune, Goichi Suda, Yoot Saito and Yasumi Matsuno among others. But there was one game that stood out to me as something really quite special. It was the considerably less well-known Millennium Kitchen's Attack Of The Friday Monsters, a sweet slice of life adventure that saw you play as ten-year-old Sohta walking the streets of his small Tokyo suburb on a hazy summer afternoon in 1971. It was a tender celebration of childhood nostalgia and imagination, with just an inkling of some menacing undertones, both from the people Sohta meets in his neighbourhood and the titular Friday kaiju monsters that may or may not exist in the real world.

I mention all this because The Kids We Were is probably the only game I've played since then that's even come close to capturing some of that Attack Of The Friday Monsters magic. You won't find any kaiju here, but this is a similarly nostalgic portrait of pastoral Tokyo, as viewed through the eyes of young Minato on his summer holidays, first in the present day and then in the 1980s when he ends up travelling back in time Back To The Future-style to when his parents first met as kids. With three days to right past wrongs, this is one of those gentle, coming of age tales that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy in all the right places, even when there's no real 'game' to speak of.

The latest DLC for Prison Architect was both announced and released yesterday. It's called Perfect Storm and it adds 'Calamities' to the game - disasters which can befall your prison that you need to build contingencies for and overcome. That includes weather such as lightning storms, heatwaves and snow storms, but also rat infestations.

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The Genshin Impact The Great Banquet of the Adepti event is now live. Users can earn various rewards by participating in the event. This includes primogems, mora, and other valuable materials. The Great Banquet of the Adepti is one of several Lantern Rite related events players can participate in in Genshin Impact. However, this event is limited to web browsers. The event plays out similar to a visual novel. It tasks players with creating an enjoyable experience for the various adepti.

Players will need to participate in a mini-game, which consists of collecting treasure and other valuables at the bottom of the ocean. The mini-game is fairly simple. Players simply need to aim the net attached to their ship, and try to catch Shimmering Shells, which will allow for players to progress in the event.

However, only 400 Shimmering Shells can be caught per-day. By unlocking various stands at the Lantern Rite event, players will receive rewards. For example, unlocking the Jade Delicacies stand will reward players will 10 primogems and 20,000 mora. Players will have three chances to obtain Shimmering Shells per-day. However, they can increase this number by going to the Genshin Impact Facebook page, or sharing the event on social media.

Genda announced that it has renamed Genda Sega Entertainment to Genda GiGO Entertainment after acquiring 100 percent of the company shares. It also revealed plans to rename all existing Sega arcade centers to GiGO as well.

The company's chairman Nao Kataoka explained on Twitter that GiGO is short for "Get into the Gaming Oasis." Sega's arcade centers in Ikebukuro, Akihabara, and Shinjuku will be the first ones to have their names changed. Other facilities across Japan will follow afterward.

When Genda acquired a majority of Sega Entertainment's shares in December 2020, it only obtained 85.1 percent of the stocks. At that time, Sega owned 14.9 percent, so it still had some say in the company's decision-making processes in 2021. For example, Genda had to retain Sega's name on arcade centers and the Genda Sega Entertainment company.

The latest announcement revealed that Genda purchased the remaining stocks owned by Sega. This means Sega no longer has a hand in the arcade facility management company, as Genda now fully owns it.

Ubisoft is shutting Hyper Scape down this year less than two years after its release. 

First revealed in the summer of 2020, and released shortly after its reveal as a free-to-play battle royale, Hyper Scape put players in a futuristic city to fight against 100 players in squads of three. To differentiate itself from just another battle royale, Hyper Scape attempted to do things a little differently. It kept loadouts small, traversal extremely fast-paced, and it even gave viewers on streaming platforms the ability to vote on in-game events that changed the ongoing match. 

However, it wasn’t enough to keep the battle royale afloat and now, Ubisoft has announced that Hyper Space will be shutting down in a couple of months. 

In December, Ubisoft raised eyebrows when it announced Quartz, an NFT platform for big budget games which would host resellable in-game items with unique codes stamped on.

Despite saying the system would use an "energy-efficient technology... a million times less energy than a bitcoin transaction", fans still criticised Ubisoft's focus on and championing of a technology they claimed was unnecessary and speculative.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: gods, monsters, and gates!

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

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Long-awaited Batman spin-off Gotham Knights is still due to make its 2022 release date, Warner Bros. has confirmed.

In a series of tweets last night, WarnerMedia boss Jason Kilar reiterated that both Hogwarts Legacy and Gotham Knights would release this calendar year, despite both currently holding vague "2022" launch windows.

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Spike Chunsoft announced that it appointed Hololive VTubers Inugami Korone and Shishiro Botan as official ambassadors for Dying Light 2: Stay Human. The company published a schedule for the VTubers' promotional streams, which will run around the game's February 2022 release.

Botan will first do a warm-up by playing the Switch release of Dying Light on February 3, 2022. Korone will stream a single-player session of Dying Light 2 when the game comes out on February 4, 2022. Botan will also launch her own stream of the same game the next day, on February 5, 2022. Finally, Sakura Miko and Yukihana Lamy will join Korone and Botan for a multiplayer session stream on February 6, 2022.

[tnm_video layout="mnmd-post-media"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1rUpAX7WFE[/tnm_video]

Square Enix revealed more information regarding characters that will appear in Fullmetal Alchemist Mobile. While characters like Lust, Envy, and Gluttony were previously shown in a trailer for Fullmetal Alchemist Mobile, they are now confirmed to be part of the roster. The official website has updated, sharing biographies and illustrations of the individual characters. Additionally, the website also reveals that the Japanese voice actors from the animated series will return to reprise their roles. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]

The website also hints at a third, unrevealed faction. As it stands, characters are currently divided into three lists. One list is comprised of the Elric brothers and other supporting characters. The second list are the Homunculi, which includes Lust, Envy, and Gluttony. More characters will be added to each respective list. It is unclear what characters will potentially appear in the third category.

You can take a look at the illustrations of Lust, Envy, and Gluttony for Fullmetal Alchemist Mobile below.

[gallery ids="914370,914371,914373" link="file"]

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean and Converse are collaborating on a pair of Jolyne shoes. The collaboration Converse shoes will have the same pattern as Jolyne’s outfit, and Jolyne’s butterfly also appears as a charm hanging off one of the shoes. The Stone Ocean Converse cost 13,200 JPY ($114.30). Pre-orders on Premium Bandai end on February 20, 2022, and the shoes will come out in March 2023.

Aside from the outer pattern and charm resembling Jolyne’s motifs, the soles actually have her and her Stand, Stone Free on them. Converse’s trademark ankle star also uses the design of Jolyne’s star mark. In terms of the actual feel of the shoes, they have React insoles, which are more cushiony than normal ones.

Here are some more pictures of the Stone Ocean Converse shoes:

[gallery columns="4" ids="914349,914348,914347,914346" link="file"]

This is not the first time that Converse has collaborated with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. For example, there are shoes for Kira and Rohan from Diamond is Unbreakable, as well as a pair of Jotaro Converse from Stardust Crusaders. Like the Stone Ocean ones, these shoes are not available for international shipping from Premium Bandai.

Anecdotally, the first records of modern golf date back to its banning in 15th century Scotland. “Nay Golf,” said parliament. “It’s turning the soldiers into fiendish, turf-snorting club-strokers who’d rather say shit like ‘Triple Bogey’ than batter the English, and we’re no having it.” RPGolf Legends is not set in 15th century Scotland, but it does take place in a world where golf has been banned. Only you - through the power of bare-bones ARPG combat and a fun but limited golf mini-game - can save the noble sport from ostensible nonexistence.

I say ostensible because, in reality, golf is everywhere. Our heroine Aerin’s hometown is called Mulligandale. It has two shops, one of them dedicated entirely to golf. Folk shimmy about in golfwear, talking about golf. Many give out golf-related quests, the rewards for which are usually some form of golfing paraphernalia, often golf balls. The actual golf courses themselves have been sealed off by an ill-defined big villainous, but if you put a translucent barrier around the thing you’re trying to crush and still let the people you’re attempting to terrorise build their entire society as a monument to it, you’re basically asking for a plucky hero to restore the national passtime to glory. Highly questionable bit of villainy, this.

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Hyper Scape was launched suddenly in July 2020. Initially accessible only via Twitch drops, early streams gathered half a million viewers before it opened up to everyone ten days later.

Unfortunately its drop in popularity was just as sudden, and almost as immediate. Eighteen months later, Ubisoft have announced they're ending development and shutting the game down on April 28th.

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In the 1970s Will Shortz submitted a crossword to the New York Times with a word so scandalous that the editor rejected it. The word: bellybutton. Fast forward over four decades and Shortz himself is the Times crossword editor who is now the gatekeeper, selecting puzzles from the nearly 200 submissions he gets a week.…

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Destiny 2’s longest season still has a month to go. That’s bad news for everyone eagerly awaiting the game’s massive upcoming Witch Queen expansion, but good news for those who still need time to tie up a few loose ends. That’s especially true for newer players who may be a bit behind on the four-year old live service…

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Face it, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End isn’t exactly a nail-bitingly difficult game. In fact, the debatably toughest moment of Naughty Dog’s modern classic comes in the form of a game-within-a-game: Crash flippin’ Bandicoot.

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Even if shiny hunting in Pokémon games isn’t your cup of tea, it’s always exciting to randomly happen upon one of these uber-rare, alternately colored pocket monsters. Fortunately, Pokémon Legends: Arceus makes achieving this feat easy by reviving an old series tradition and giving players one guaranteed shiny by way…

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Back in 2020, Square Enix made headlines with an absolutely gorgeous series of 1/4 “Masterline” figures dedicated to NieR Automata and they’ll soon be delivered.

The most expensive of the bunch, the Deluxe Version, costs $3,399 and will be released in March. While most of us won’t have a chance to own it, at least we can take a good look at what it looks like with a new video.

Today Square Enix released an unboxing video in which the trio of figures portraying androids 2B, 9S, and A2 are assembled alongside their complex base.

In a previous video, we saw how they impressed Yoko Taro, Yusuke Saito, and Takahisa Taura themselves, and that’s not very surprising considering that they’re made by Prime1 Studio, widely considered masters of the high end for video game and pop culture figures.

Now, you get to share the emotion of opening the box and putting the diorama together in the video below.

Rare has announced that it is shutting down its PvP Arena in Sea of Thieves. 

Revealed during the Sea of Thieves 2022 Preview Event, The Arena is officially coming to an end as it simply isn’t a mode played by most players. Rare says it was a tough decision to come to, but the right one for the future of the open-world pirate game. 

“Firstly, this was an extremely tough decision, but we firmly believe it’s the right one to allow us to focus on our plans for the central free-roaming Adventure mode,” Rare writes in a blog post. “Despite the efforts of a hugely talented team, The Arena unfortunately never met the goals we originally had for it – either in creating a genuine alternative way to play Sea of Thieves with a competitive spin, or a short session experience if you didn’t have the time to commit to an open-ended Adventure session.” 

The Arena will officially close at the start of Season Six, which is slated to begin on March 10, 2022. Those who have played in The Arena before and have reached or passed Sea Dogs rank 5 will receive the following ship cosmetics: 

If you’ve been paying attention to Sega for the last couple of years, then you likely know that it has been slowly shuttering its massive Japan-based arcade centers. Now, Sega has announced that it is leaving the business of arcades entirely, ending a 50-year era defined by claw machines, fighters, and more. 

This news comes by way of Destructoid, which translated a statement released by Sega this morning. In it, the company reveals that it intends to sell the remaining 14.9% of shares it holds within its arcade division to another company named Genda Inc., which Destructoid reports is the same company that Sega has been selling its arcade centers to over the last few years. 

“Sega stores across the country will be switching their store names to GiGO, to express our gratitude for Sega’s 56 years of history and our desire to be an oasis that quenches people’s thirst for real entertainment,” Genda chairman Hisashi Kataoka said in regards to the news, according to Video Games Chronicle. “We will start with Ikebukuro, Akihabara, and Shinjuku. Then to the whole country.” 

The day Pokémon fans have been anxiously awaiting is finally here. Pokémon Legends: Arceus is out on the Nintendo Switch, and we're celebrating by playing it live on stream starting at 12 p.m. CT only on Twitch! Join John Carson and Alex Stadnik as they traverse the realm of Hisui and show off all the new additions to the iconic series.

With Legends, Game Freak has taken the most significant series leap in quite some time, but did the risk pay off? Our own Brian Shea seems to think so. In his review, he said:

Square Enix released FFVII Remake concept art that highlights one of the dresses Aerith can wear in Chapter 8. Specifically, the concept art reveals that the pink dress Aerith can wear has flower details. The flower pattern is reminiscent of the yellow flowers that grow in the church.

Aerith's dress features several flower details. One of these details is on the collar of the dress. Looking closely, you can also see the embroidered yellow flower details run along the body of the dress. The outfit shown is one of three dresses Aerith can wear in Chapter 8.

You can take a look at the concept art of Aerith's dress below.

[embed]https://twitter.com/FFVIIR_CLOUD/status/1486270185866768387[/embed]

In addition, Square Enix showed concept art of Aerith's house and room as it appears in FFVII Remake. It included a comparison picture of how the house looked in the original release of Final Fantasy VII too.

The concept art for Aerith's house features a complete look at her bedroom, her mother's room, and the roof. While the concept art isn't as detailed as the dress, it provides the viewer with a glimpse of some of the design elements that went into each room. For example, Aerith's room is slightly more furnished than her mother's room.

You can look at the concept art of the Gainsborough house below.

[embed]https://twitter.com/FFVIIR_CLOUD/status/1484752688743170053[/embed]