January 2022

During MegaHobby+Plus 2022 Winter, Megahouse announced two new Lucrea Persona 5 Royal figures of Fox and Noir. The figures will come out some time in the near future. Additionally, the Noir figure will come with Mona. So far, there is no news as to when these Phantom Thieves of Hearts will become available or how much they will cost. [Thanks, Hobby Watch!]

Fox will come with his katana, whereas Noir will have her grenade launcher. Mona stands by Noir's feet, and from the silhouette is seems like he will show up as a bus rather than in his cat form. Fox’s pose looks like he is about to unsheathe his katana. Meanwhile, Noir is tipping her hat in a salute. So far, Megahouse has only revealed a key visual for Fox and the silhouette for Noir.

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In 2021, MegaHouse opened pre-orders for figures of Goro Akechi as Crow and the Persona 5 Protagonist as Joker. The Crow figure will come out in July 2022 and the Joker figure will come out in August 2022. MegaHouse also has pre-orders open for an anniversary edition figure of Arsene. Lastly, it announced that a figure of Loki is in development.

miHoYo revealed a new set of Genshin Impact emojis to use on Hoyolab. This time, the Paimon’s Paintings XII emojis focus on Liyue characters, with Shenhe and Yun Jin making their first appearances. The Tweet also promises more chibi emojis in the future.

https://twitter.com/GenshinImpact/status/1486911915116924929

There is a total of sixteen new Genshin Impact emojis on Hoyolab, with a wild range of emotions. Four of them are of Shenhe, and four of them are of Yun Jin. These two are the newest characters in the game, debuting in Version 2.4. Additionally, there are two of Zhongli, two of Ningguang, two of Xiao, and two of Guoba. As the Lantern Rite event is underway, it stands to reason why characters from the Liyue region are the focus.

Stickers, icons, and emojis of the various Genshin Impact characters are available for use on Discord, Hoyolab forums, and in-game. In December 2020, miHoYo released a set of winter-themed emojis, while packs of various LINE stickers are available in the messaging app. Of these icons, Paimon’s Paintings are a collection of chibi emojis which are available to use on the official forums.

Square Enix and LINE will release a new Final Fantasy XIV calendar wallpaper, which features Alisaie Leveilleur. Users can download the wallpaper, regardless of region, through the LINE SNS app. However, they must be friends with the official Final Fantasy XIV account to receive the wallpaper. The Alisaie wallpaper is immediately available to view through the Final Fantasy XIV LINE account's mixed media feed. LINE will distribute the wallpaper through the in-application messaging feed at a later date. It is designed to fit mobile devices and isn't suitable for desktop use.

The wallpaper features Alisaie in her Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker attire. The image directly comes from a render that released leading up to the Endwalker expansion. In it, Alisaie wields her signature rapier, set against a background of floating islands and crystals.

Previous Final Fantasy XIV LINE wallpapers have included promotional renders for the Endwalker expansion. This includes a wallpaper features Zenos as he appears in Endwalker, along with promotional illustrations created for the expansion. One such image features the Warrior of Light, as shown in the cinematic trailers, and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn gathered around the remains of a city.

They say everything is bigger in Texas. It's a statement I have only briefly put to the test during a rushed weeked in San Antonio, a trip I mostly remember for 1) seeing a roadside billboard that advertised Jesus on one side and massive tits on the other, and 2) making a joke about having a puffy taco "so I guess I should see a doctor!" [finger guns] that fell bone-chillingly flat to a dinner table of American business colleagues.

You know where everything actually is bigger? The past. Join us on this special supporter-funded bonus podcast episode where Nate is our gentle and enthusiastic guide for really massive historical monsters. A giant owl? Bigfoot is really an orangutan? A huge fish that might in fact just be well big, owing to a mistake with its skeleton? Yes, we have all these delights and more. A big thank you to our supporters for making The Nate Files happen.

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With NFTs in games proving unpopular with almost everyone who doesn't plan to get rich by fleecing other players, even appearing to support them is controversial. This is a situation Riot Games found themselves in after a lighthearted tweet about one of the Valorant wizards visiting an art exhibition on a day out. Turns out, the picture seen by Killjoy is an NFT. Cue Riot scrambling to make clear it was unintentional and say, literally, "Whoopsie!"

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Pokemon Legends: Arceus launched on 28th January, 2022 and you can already pick up a copy for a complete bargain at Currys. The UK retailer has dropped the new Nintendo Switch game's price down to just £34.99 - that's £15 off its RRP price!

If you're planning on buying the latest Pokemon game, you'll need to select free delivery and enter the code SWNEXTDAY at the checkout to redeem the £5 discount, bringing the price down from £39.99 to just £34.99.

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Hidetaka Miyazaki has discussed the difficulty of Elden Ring in a new interview on the PlayStation Blog.

The Souls games are notorious for their high skill barrier of entry and punishing difficulty, but Miyazaki hopes that perception will change with Elden Ring.

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Just how good is cloud gaming on Nintendo Switch? The upcoming Kingdom Hearts games on Switch - including 1.5, 2.5, and the latest Kingdom Hearts 3 - are set to be purely cloud-based, with Square-Enix charging $90 for the entire collection or $50 for each individual game. Is the visual quality and input lag good enough to make this work? Does the concept even work for a system designed around take-anywhere portability? Demos are available on the eShop for the Kingdom Hearts titles, as well as other releases including Control, Guardians of the Galaxy and Hitman 3. We tested them all and the results are mixed to say the least.

First of all, the fact that demos are available on the eShop at all deserves kudos - it means that you have a chance to experience the games running on your own Switch paired with your own internet connection, and it's those demos we've used in putting together this piece. Of course, the demos are also available to any Switch user, meaning you can test the games for yourself too, the only limitation being a hard 15-minute limit per user, per game.

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Twitch has been criticised for not doing enough to support the mental health of its streamers.

A report on the Amazon-owned streaming platform by the BBC details concerns that streamers are encouraged to spend an unhealthy amount of time online, with damaging effects to mental health.

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While trotting about the first free-roaming area of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, it would behoove you to visit the massive, angry Rapidash roaming the Horseshoe Plains. You’re sure to get on like a house-sized horse on fire.

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A new Pokémon game means, well, new Pokémon, and Pokémon Legends: Arceus is no exception. And while the latest installment in Nintendo’s flagship role-playing franchise may skew from the series’ foundational elements in interesting ways with its fluid, open-world gameplay, some of these debuting Pokémon still come…

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Pokémon Legends: Arceus does a lot of things differently from the mainline Pokémon games, and that includes completing your Pokédex. Where before the games tasked you with collecting the entire monster compendium to fill out the encyclopedia within the device, Arceus takes place in the past, presumably before Bill…

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Samantha Kalman is a game designer and musician. She's currently at Respawn Entertainment working on Apex Legends.

Wassup bomb kids? Bomb fam? Bombarinos? Bombadillos? Bombaramas? Fans of the excellent PS2 puzzle game Bombastic? And duders of all genders? It’s 2022 but with the ongoing time warp it might as well be 20XX, the exact year Megaman X occurs. I suppose our robot tech has come a long way, but Replicant tech is still lagging behind Capcom’s clairvoyant fortune telling. Honestly I’d take a robot apocalypse over this very real and very boring one. But enough about the droll of miserable reality, let’s talk about video games!

I have a short list for 2021. A lot of great games came out this last year, but unfortunately I wasn’t in a position to fully adopt 10 whole lovable games. I had to be selective about what I wanted to play and only a handful of games spoke to me enough that I really stuck with them.

Parris Fosteer is a Community Developer for Finji, a believer in pizza bargains, and a quality follow on TikTok.

Hi, I’m Harris Foster. Normally I’m doing community work for games like Night in the Woods, Zelda Like a Fox, and Chicory: A Colorful Tale. Around the Giant Bomb world, you might know me as that guy who constantly gets his name spelled wrong. This happened once during Giant Bomb @ Nite 2018, and then many, *many* times after that. It even somehow came up during the Ghost Recon Breakpoint Quick Look. I still don’t know how this happens. It’s not even that hard of a name.

aurahack is an illustrator and character artist that works in both games and music. You might’ve seen some of the vinyls she’s made or some of the buffoonery done for videogames.com in the past. Currently, she is chairwoman of the Ascari Respect Zone, headquartered on her Twitter, which is also where she regularly posts art and great opinions. You can support her on Patreon or find her on Twitch where she streams art every Monday and Thursday @958 .beats.

Arcade Pit is a weekly streaming gameshow in the spirit of Nick Arcade, but better! Brutal trivia and silly challenges, every Sunday at 8pm EDT! Since Arcade Pit is being represented by two people, this is a COMBO GOTY LIST. Emily’s top 5, plus Smight’s Top 5. Put ‘em together and, baby, that’s what I call ten. It’s Arcade Pit’s Top Ten Games of 2021!

Smight: This year has brought me even further into the realm of indie games; I played them almost exclusively. There were some tremendous releases that offered a lot of innovation and beautiful artwork. I also ran into some fresh roguelikes aiming to absorb hundreds of hours of my time.

Emily: 2021 was a hell of a year! Thankfully, part of what made the year was an absolutely great track of new releases. Even weirder was the number of highly anticipated sequels that were like… a decade in the making? NEO: The World Ends With You, New Pokemon Snap, No More Heroes 3, Metroid Dread- it’s like some kind of stars aligned just right to see people get exactly what they’d been asking for. Maybe it was the universe’s way of apologizing.

But regardless of why they happened, I’m here to talk about my personal favorite releases of 2021! (Things that didn’t make the list that I recommend checking out, by the way: Monster Hunter Rise, New Pokemon Snap, Inscryption, Loop Hero, Resident Evil 8.) Unlike Smight, I played a lot of mainline stuff this year and it definitely shows in my picks! Hopefully at least one of them might be new to you, because I recommend them all highly.

Smight’s #5: Nuclear Blaze

Greg Kasavin is writer and creative director at Supergiant Games, the small independent studio behind Hades, Pyre, Transistor, and Bastion. Prior to Supergiant, Greg worked at 2K Games, Electronic Arts, and GameSpot. He’s @kasavin on Twitter.

Hi! My name is Ben and if you’re reading this then you probably know that I used to work here. If you didn’t know that, welcome to Giant Bomb! You should know that Giant Bomb Premium gives you an incredible ad-free experience and access to hundreds of hours of premium content.

I’ve been very busy this year but managed to play ELEVEN video games that made an impact on me this year, so I cut one (sorry Pokémon Unite) and ordered the rest. You know how it goes.

Unfortunately, I am still in podcast jail with Sarah Koenig and The Office Ladies, so this might be my last message to the public for a while. Keep up the good fight,

-Ben

10) Back 4 Blood

Left 4 Dead more like Dead on Arrival if getting three of my friends to play this with me is any indication. But it turns out you can have fun even with a mediocre zombie survival shooter.

9) Valheim

Hello! My name is David Galindo, aka chubigans, and I run a small little indie company, Vertigo Gaming Inc., known best for the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series and a new Twitch-only free game called ChefSquad! I love making games and will continue to do so until the company either makes one hundred million dollars or declares bankruptcy, whichever comes first. Woo!

The Tabletop Zone

Before we get into my games list I wanted to talk a little bit about my favorite tabletop games of 2021!

Chris Tilton is a composer and he’s written music for a few TV shows (Fringe, Zoo) and video games (SimCity, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Black). You can hear Chris Tilton’s latest work on the upcoming Epix horror series, From.

When not working, he can be found playing video games, or perhaps procrastinating in chat on a Giant Bomb live stream.

Even though I made little progress towards completing games in 2021, I sure did have some fun! But first, my obligatory 2021 “didn’t get to these yet” list: Umurangi Generation. Beyond a Steel Sky. Disco Elysium: Director’s Cut. Inscryption. Psychonauts 2. Forza Horizon 5. Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, on to the games I DID play.

5. No Man’s Sky: Frontiers

Cohen Edenfield writes games and plays them. You can find them on Twitter, Twitch, and Youtube. They have a Master’s degree in literature in a landfill somewhere.

I played more games than usual in 2021, just like I did in 2020, for the extremely obvious reason that we’re living in what threatens to be a forever-plague. Desperate as I was for distraction, it seems strange to judge games for how “good” they were. Any game that got me to stop thinking about the circumstances of our shared existence for longer than a few minutes gets a 10/10 from me. I was an easy A.

That caveat aside, some discrete elements of the new games I played this year have managed to stick in my head for weeks and even months after I put them down. My list is an attempt to explore and examine these things. Some of them impressed me, some delighted me, and some of them pissed me off, but they’re all still on my mind. Given the state of my mind these days, that’s quite the accomplishment.

Slowbeef is one of the first Let’s Players, and currently streams and creates content on Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter.

Hi everyone, thanks for coming to my piece, I appreciate you. Listen, I don’t know about you, but I like video games. Actually, I really like the ones off the beaten path, as it were. Stuff that maybe you want to lean around Lady Dimitrescu’s 9’6” frame to take a peek at. Or squeeze by the Narcacuga, rub your eyes and go, “Hey, me, what’s that game off in the distance that I might not have played? Also how did the writer remember Lady Dimitrescu’s height without reference and why is he freely admitting that on GiantBomb?”

Look, shit happens, it was a weird year for all of us, but grab a chair and I’ll tell you about five games that my schedule allowed me to pla- I mean! Games that deserve a good look. I do promise that all of them are either:

• Better than The Game Awards’ Game of the Year 2021 “It Takes Two” or at least...
• Contain one less drawn out scene where your maim and torture a sentient toy who pleads for her life than The Game Awards’ Game of the Year 2021 “It Takes Two” or at least...
• Seriously, what tone was “It Takes Two” going for there? Like is this a Pixar-kind of “getting back together story” or-

Anyway.

2021 was a hell of a year for me. My life went through innumerable changes and challenges; some good, some bad. One of the good ones was a return to guilt-free gaming. Just being able to enjoy a hobby without feeling bad about it is a powerful and healthy thing and what a great year it’s been for games. Here are the top 5 games, in no particular order, that I played in 2021.

Metroid Dread

We all lived through the same dirty glass backwash that was 2021, so I won’t go through the whole rigmarole of how games were and whatnot. Games were good! Some companies that make games are awful! We learned some important lessons that we’ll never our lesson from.

10. Hot Wheels Unleashed

The weirdest part of this list will be having three racing games from me, a man who does not know how to drive. I don’t mean I’m bad at driving. I mean I don’t have a license to drive. But in Hot Wheels Unleashed you can drive a tiny Ninja Turtles van through an abandoned construction site, sooooo.

Today the Microsoft Flight Simulator add-on scene was very lively, with several releases and new assets showcased for upcoming aircraft.

We start with DC Designs and its concord, which received the first video showcasing a take-off with full reheat from Heathrow.

We also get new screenshots and a development update from the developer.

“Much progress once again this week aboard Concorde’s flight deck. Much of the work has continued to be focused on instruments and systems coding, trying to get everything working as close as possible to the way it did aboard the real aircraft. All annunciator lights are now active, either under specific systems-orientated code or under the control of the light test switch until their full code is ready. The pilot’s instruments are now also fully operational, with the First Officer’s instruments to follow, leaving just the engineer panel remaining ( some instruments are working there, but most gauge needles are still to be animated ). CodenameJack has also worked out how to simulate Concorde’s thirteen fuel tanks using the sim’s eight so that will also increase the realism of flight operations.

Today, Bandai-Namco Group has provided anime fans with a release window for the highly anticipated new television show Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. This news comes by way of the official website, which revealed that the show is set to air in October 2022.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury was officially announced last September during the 2nd Gundam Conference event. Outside of the name, not too much information was provided regarding the contents, storyline, or actors that will be in the show.

The series will be the first television show in the franchise since Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans originally aired in Japan back in 2015. The anime followed the adventures of a group of juvenile soldiers who rebel against the adults who betrayed them on a futuristic, terraformed version of Mars and health with themes such as war, slavery, child soldiers, poverty, neo-colonialism, and corruption.

The Silent Hill 3 Robbie the Rabbit mascots are coming back as Nendoroid figures. Good Smile Company announced it will release two inspired by the characters. One is pink, and the other is blue. Both will launch in September 2022 in Japan. A North American release will follow in November 2022. They’ll be ¥5,800 /$58.99 each.

While the general look of both characters is the same, the color you choose determines the accessories you will get. Each of the Robbie the Rabbit Nendoroids will have both bloody and clean face options for its face and body. There will also be parts so they can be positioned in a sitting pose. The blue Robbie will be able to carry a circular saw or plank of wood. The pink one will come with a chainsaw and iron pipe.

Here’s the blue Robbie the Rabbit figure.
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And this is the pink one.
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There's a new The PlayStation Blog interview with Elden Ring Director and Writer Hidetaka Miyazaki went over the difficulty of both it and FromSoftware games in general. At first, when offering tips for newcomers to the company's games, he suggested people shouldn't worry too much. He noted, "...I realize that while we offer games with a high level of challenge, we design them in a way that feels fulfilling to overcome." However after that, he specifically discussed the difficulty of the company's games and his thoughts about how many people might be able to beat Elden Ring.

Here is the exact response Miyazaki had regarding the difficulty level from The PlayStation Blog.

A new game is in development based on The Seven Deadly Sins (a.k.a. Nanatsu no Taizai). It'll be an open-world action RPG. Developed by Netmarble, the operators of Lineage 2, its formal title is The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin. 

Korean gaming outlet Inven posted the announcement trailer on its Youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQJ7lP26G_c&t=1s

The trailer for The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin shows off a large-scale, apparently seamless game world. Both above-ground and underwater areas appear. Characters are shown engaging in combat against large monsters as a team. They also fight through variable weather conditions and at different times of the day. Other characters are seen gathering resources and using special abilities to glide through the air. One portion shows Meliodas summoning Diane from a menu for aid in building a stone bridge. Meliodas then ascends the new bridge and climbs up the rock wall to end the trailer on an expansive vista.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin appears to be related to Netmarble's other Seven Deadly Sins game, The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross. That game, which came out in 2020, is a more traditional turn-based RPG. Origin will feature a new original story and star a new protagonist, Tristan. The nature of the game world will allow players to interact and control other characters from the series too.

Rather than play a video game, Hololive Vtuber Minato Aqua will star in her own. An Entergram title is in development for Japan. The announcement came up during her January 2022 solo concert. No gameplay footage appeared. [Thanks, Gematsu!]

This will actually be the Vtuber's second appearance in a video game, as she and other Hololive stars appeared in a Neptunia title. She showed up in the PS4 and PC game Neptunia Virtual Stars. That's available worldwide.

As part of the Aqua Iro in Wonder☆Land concert, Minato Aqua and other Hololive Vtubers appeared to perform some of her most notable songs. A streaming concert ticket is available for 5,000円 (~$43). It also marked the debut of DNN’s “I Wanna.” Some of the songs she performed were “Dadadada Tenshi,” “Discommunication Alien,” “Domination! All the World is an Ocean,” “I Wanna,” and “For the Win.”

While The Elder Scrolls VI might be years and years away, there’s still plenty of Elder Scrolls fun to be had in ZeniMax Online Studios’ MMO.

The Elder Scrolls Online has received multiple expansions since its launch years ago and its next one has been announced. Titled Legacy of the Bretons, ZeniMax Online says it’s a “year-long saga” that will begin with "High Isle." 

“We chose High Isle as the location for our next chapter because it’s a large departure from anything we’ve done over the last few years,” ESO creative director Rich Lambert writes in a new blog post. “High Isle is the epitome of the chivalric Breton culture – a resort-like island known for their nobility, with towering cliffs, pristine beaches, and loads of ancient ruins to explore. In addition to unique biomes and aesthetics, this island chain has never been explored in any Elder Scrolls game, so having the opportunity to add to the rich lore of Elder Scrolls and explore a completely new location is really exciting.” 

As we teeter on the edge of January ready to tumble headfirst into a new month, Microsoft has revealed the latest selection of games coming to Xbox Live subscribers by way of February's Games With Gold, which this time include Never Yield and Broken Sword 5.

Never Yield - or rather, Aerial_Knight's Never - is a 3D side-scroller in the vain of endless runner that sees players stampeding across a strikingly designed future Tokyo, all to a winning soundtrack created by Detroit Artist. Eurogamer never got around to reviewing this one, but Christian Donlan seemed quite taken with its rhythms a while back.

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Happy New Year! Somehow we went straight from January 2020 to January 2022. That's weird. Huh. Well, I'm officially giving us a do-over. I think we've earned it.

The games I've collected this week for the first TFI Friday of the year are going to ease us gently out of the time loop that we've been stuck in the last umpteen months. Accordingly, the first one is a time loop puzzle game.

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Through an entirely unplanned sequence of events, I'm currently playing two big action adventure games that couldn't be less alike. One is God Of War, a big, serious dadventure epic about an emotionally distant father trying his darnedest to connect with his (at times very irritating) son. The other is Kena: Bridge Of Spirits, an altogether more wholesome adventure about a young girl cleansing a lush, forested mountainside from a serious case of bad vibes and helping lost ghosts pass on to the other side.

About the only thing they have in common is that they both have what one might call 'cute' NPC companions. Dad Of War is joined by his eager archer "BOY!" Atreus, while Kena has her gaggle of black, fluffy Rot friends (above, right). According to the widely accepted law of big googly-eyes, I should find the Rot absolutely adorable and thus beyond reproach. Atreus does not have big googly-eyes (they are merely wide and naive), but he is certainly a lot cuter than God Of War's other main companion, a talking disembodied head. And yet. Even though Atreus has now reached that stage where he's doing all his adolescent whining and rebellion and "I know you are, but what am I?" nonsense in the space of about two hours, I would much rather have this sulky pre-teen by my side than the interminable Rot. Let me explain.

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In theory, I miss auto scrolling arcade shooters and would love it if they came back. In reality, they come back all the time and I never really click with them because what I really miss is being a child and feeling like almost every game I saw was magical.

I'm pretty bad at them as well, which doesn't help. Mostly though, I became jaded and curmudgeonly at around nine years old, and will never know such naive wonder again.

Still, Hyper Echelon is fun.

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We are less than a month out from the release of Elden Ring. Some are already planning to take off from work to play it. Others are planning to take off from the internet to avoid what will likely be another round of game difficulty discourse. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki has broached the subject in a new interview,…

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The best Uncharted game doesn’t open in media res with hero Nathan Drake hanging, gutshot, off a derailed train in the Himalayas. It doesn’t start with him tearing through 12-foot Pacific swells in a speedboat on a stormy night. No, it kicks off with a focus on his sporadic companion Chloe Frazer perusing a market in…

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