Path Of Exile's latest expansion Siege Of The Atlas is out - and smoothly, it seems. It simplifies the Atlas endgame while making it more customisable, while also adding new eldritch bosses to smash through.
Meta is adding a new system called "Personal Boundary" to Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, two of their virtual reality apps. It's designed to curb creepy behaviour within the company's much-hyped metaverse by preventing other player's from invading your personal space.
Wordle is a genre now. Its rapid success has caused a proliferation of browser games in which all players are presented with the same puzzle each day, limited guesses, and easy options to share their results.
My new favourite is Worldle. It meets all the criteria, including being free and playable in your browser, but instead of guessing a word you're attempt to identify a country by its silhouette.
If you want the HARD NUMBERS on the staff's GOTY lists and the many guest lists on the site, check out @marino's Data Dump: GOTY 2021 Staff & Guests Breakdown. If you want to know what would be the site's 2021 GOTY if it relied on HARD SCIENCE, then this is the post for you! Additionally, remember to check out Superkenon's Giant Bomb GOTY MEGATHREAD where they annotate and compile all of Giant Bomb's GOTY content into a single post!
Speaking of the site's GOTY content, if you tined into it and a the Bombcasts after it, you might have noticed a new version of the Giant Bomb theme song! This music is spectacularly brought to you by Vektroid/Macintosh Plus. Oh, and the Community 2021 GOTY voting results are up for you to marvel over! Read which game the community thinks should have been the site's 2021 GOTY!
Rocket Panda Games released a new gameplay trailer of the upcoming 2D fighting game Phantom Breaker: Omnia showcasing a match.
This time around we take a look at a battle between Mei and Itsuki with English voices, taking a good look at their moves.
This follows a string of character trailers of which one featuring Mikoto, one showcasing Itsuki herself, one featuring Waka, one starring Yuzuha, one showcasing Ren, one focusing on Ria, one revealing Maestra and Artifactor, and one focusing on Sophia.
You can check it out below.
Acclaimed developer PMDG released a development update about its upcoming Boeing 737 add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is one of the most anticipated by the userbase at the moment.
CEO Robert Randazzo provided information on what the team has been doing over the past week, and share that an internal beta date and release window have been set.
Of course, the fact that it’s internal means that they know, but they’re not telling us just yet.
Below you can check out the full update:
As we wrap up this week of development on the PMDG 737 for Microsoft Flight Simulator, I wanted to share a progress update to give you an idea where we are and how things are going.
This week’s primary focus fell into a couple of areas:
Elden Ring's director Hidetaka Miyazaki and multiple PlayStation Studios developers have revealed their personal favorite bosses from the Dark Souls series, Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
While Miyazaki had previously shared that the Old Monk boss from Demon's Souls was his favorite, he discussed a bit more as to why he made that choice with PlayStation.Blog.
“If we’re talking about a boss that I’m ‘most proud of’ (to use those specific words), it would probably be the Old Monk from Demon’s Souls," Miyazaki said. "The reason being is there was a lot of pushback against that design and what we were trying to do with it. But it was something I really, really wanted to do. I wanted to get that boss concept into the game, both from a visual design perspective and gameplay perspective, including the multiplayer element.
In the 30 years since Akihiro Suzuki started at Koei, he's spent 20 of them overseeing Dynasty Warriors - progenitor of the musou genre, one of gaming's longest-running series, and one whose every entry bar the fifth Suzuki has been involved in. It's a success that the team could never really have anticipated - how could they, given how the series had its start in a different genre entirely.
Released on the original PlayStation back in 1997, the first Dynasty Warriors was a Soul Calibur-like one-on-one fighting game and was met with positive reviews - so much so that Omega Force, the division within Koei Tecmo that Suzuki was a part of, stuck with the genre with its next project Destrega. "Within the team we all thought it was really good, but it didn't really sell well," says Suzuki.
Click here to watch embedded media
Reviewed on:
PlayStation 5
Also on:
PlayStation 4, PC
Publisher:
Sloclap
Developer:
Sloclap
Release:
Rating:
Mature
Mastering a martial art takes years – if not a lifetime. Disciples must hone their bodies to the point that they perform every attack, every counter, every movement with pinpoint precision. A skilled warrior must move without thinking. Likewise, mastering Sifu's combat system takes a high degree of dedication and practice. Like a true martial artist, you must push through the practice pains before you reap any rewards.
In 2017, Sloclap released the martial arts-themed action/RPG Absolver, which let players design their own combat system as they battled other online players in a unique fantasy world. Absolver suffered from its barren environments and uninspired quest design, but its core combat was solid. Sloclap's follow-up game sharpens that combat system around a more focused single-player adventure. The premise is promising, though the execution is flawed.
Sundays are for having a nice tea and a little biscuit. Before you sip and/or dip, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
Details of a new Batman collection - called Batman Arkham Collection, predictably enough - has popped up online.
Without confirmation from Warner Bros. we can only chalk this up as a rumour for now, but details of the bundle - reportedly coming to Switch for €60 at the end of August, although that could be a placeholder date - are online at French retailer, WTT.
Takara Tomy Arts will start selling its “Forest Pokemon” capsule toys line starting in mid-February 2022. It will cost 300 JPY (approximately $2.60) per spin. This series will have four Pokemon to collect. In addition, you can use the capsule they come in to create a little plastic tree for them to pose with. [Thanks, Hobby Watch!]
The four Pokemon in the Forest Pokemon capsule toys collection are: Pikachu, Buneary, Starly, and Munchlax. Of these four, only Pikachu and Buneary have a berry to eat. Starly is resting in its nest. Meanwhile, Munchlax appears to be waiting for more berries to drop out from the trees. Its arms are out as if in preparation to catch something, and it is looking upwards to where the treetops presumably are. Each figure stands at around 36 millimeters, and the tree that you can construct is 88 millimeters.
Here are some more pictures of the capsule toys:
[gallery columns="6" link="file" ids="915202,915201,915199,915198,915197,915196"]
From the very first punch, Sifu is utterly uncompromising in its design. Absolver developer Sloclap’s latest martial arts beat-em-up is bold, its combat exquisite, its animation top-notch, its music outstanding, and its story – while very simple – is poignant and elegantly told. It’s also unforgiving and unapologetic, with pockets of frustrating moments during which I was certainly not in my happy place. But by the end, Sifu offered me a nearly unparalleled sense of mastery and accomplishment, and I can’t imagine that I would’ve enjoyed it half as much if it pulled its punches.
Sifu begins, as so many revenge-fueled martial arts stories do, with a murder. Your father and martial arts master is killed right before your eyes in what is quite simply one of the best prologue chapters I’ve played in recent memory. It both serves as an excellent tutorial, and a teases at what the future holds for you as you have full access to the entire catalog of unlockable moves. Eight years later, you set off on a journey to kill each of the five people involved.
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be Jackie Chan. Not the actual guy, but the version of him in those movies, where he could clear out entire rooms using luck, martial arts and whatever he had within arm’s reach. Well, with Sifu, my childhood dream is now a reality. You don’t need to be a kung fu film fanatic to appreciate this action game, though. It’s not a tired bundle of tropes packaged together with an ironic detachment. It’s a passionate celebration of what makes the genre so good. It looks at the classics, then the modern descendants of that style, and finally puts its own unique twist on the whole thing.
Growing up, I absolutely loved martial arts films. Whether it was the wax on wax off educational fun of Karate Kid or the chaotic action of Jackie Chan in Rush Hour, I found myself obsessed with these types of movies often in my youth. And while I might not be as transfixed with the artform as an adult, seeing Sifu for the first time back in February 2021 really brought back that child-like whimsy.
Sifu is a classic revenge tale, with the nameless protagonist vowing vengeance on the five people who killed their father when they were a child. Now 20, they’ve finally tracked down each member and learned enough martial arts to start their revenge mission.
Instead of an open world, though, Sifu follows a linear, level-by-level structure. The protagonist must make their way throughout each area, fighting a mix of different enemies, in order to make it to and defeat the boss at the very end and unlock the next mission.
I liked this approach, as each area was distinct and felt like its own isolated experience relevant to its boss. One level is a drug den covered in overgrowth that fits the botanist boss; another is a popping nightclub filled to the brim with vibrant colors and EDM music that blends perfectly with its boss’s fast-paced fighting style. You can tell a lot of thought was put into each setting in Sifu.
I've put about as many hours into MMORPGs as I have fingers on both hands, so perhaps I'm not the best person to pass judgement on Zenith: The Last City. Nevertheless, this incredibly ambitious VR exclusive from indie developers Ramen VR has been creating quite a buzz over the last week or so, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about for this week's VR Corner.
You can watch me bumble my way through the first few hours of this epic online quest-em-up in the video below. In it, you'll get a taste of some of the early missions, a lot of the melee combat and also maybe a little bit of romance too.
Ubisoft has reportedly awarded the efforts of its Ghost Recon Breakpoint development team with an NFT Ghost Recon 20th anniversary cap.
After hosting a workshop held to assuage concerns about the company's pivot to NFTs - non-fungible tokens recorded in blockchains - Ubisoft reportedly issued the tokens as a thank you for the Breakpoint team's sustained efforts to improve the beleaguered shooter.
Spiritale released new images of some of its upcoming figure designs, one of which is Shionne from Tales of Arise. It's not just any figure of Shionne though, as the character is wearing a special costume only included in the Premium Costume Pack DLC. The scale figure is in development, and there is no confirmed release date.
The costume, titled "SW-EQ02F" in-game, is one of a pair of Bandai Namco-commissioned costumes. Popular Japanese freelance illustrator SWAV designed costumes for both Alphen and Shionne in a futuristic style. Bandai Namco included the outfits in the Premium Costume Pack DLC along with matching hairstyles.
https://twitter.com/Spiritale_shop/status/1490128128920162304?s=20&t=-cLralMpFiJmKl1wLrSBiw
Spiritale announced the figure as part of the ongoing WonFes Winter 2022 event. However, details are still scarce. For now, we know that it will be a scale figure based on the released design. Other announcements from Spiritale include various figures of Hatsune Miku, as well as characters from My Hero Academia and Atelier Ryza 2.
Hello! It’s time for Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon.
Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks' action-horror title Ghostwire: Tokyo will reportedly take up just 20GB of space on your PC hard drive.
Surprised? Me, too. I spend a lot of time here reporting on new games taking up more and more space on our PCs and consoles, so it's a thoroughly pleasant surprise to be able to report that despite its "next-gen" tag - Ghostwire: Tokyo is a timed PS5 console exclusive - Ghostwire demands comparatively very little space.
Delightworks has revealed the five most popular Fate/Grand Order SSR characters that players leveled up to level 120. It revealed the ranking during the Chaldea Satelite Station 2021-2022 (Kochi) Stream. It's based on player data from the Japanese version of the game. Additionally, Delightworks provided design documents for Sakamoto Ryoma (Lancer) and Oryo, as well as Arahabaki. Some of the characters appear in Lostbelt 6, so those who wish to avoid spoilers should proceed with caution. [Thanks, Famitsu!]
Getting a servant to level 120 requires a significant amount of resources. In order to bring a character from level 100 to 120, users must have 300 servant coins, 10 Holy Grails, and 4,180 Gold All embers. As such, the characters that appear in the top five are likely to be the most valuable in a given player's roster.
Below are the top five SSR characters to get to level 120:
Indie developer Sabotage Studio just released another teaser trailer of its upcoming turn-based RPG Sea of Stars.
The trailer is very short as usual, but it showcases a beautifully-crafted level created for the Elder Mist Trials. It certainly brings back memories of RPGs of old.
Sea of Stars, which is a prequel set in the universe of the developer’s The Messenger, has been funded with a very successful Kickstarter campaign and will feature music by Yasunori Mitsuda.
You can enjoy the video below.
Dying Light 2 is the latest big-budget open-world game blowing up on Steam and other platforms. I enjoyed it, less for its narrative and more because it features excellent parkour and fun combat. Oh, and there are zombies and other undead mutants. But that’s not the most hard-to-believe part of Dying Light 2. No,…
If you've been struggling to download Sifu on PS5 this afternoon, you're not alone. Sloclap has confirmed that unspecified "issues" are preventing some from downloading the Early Access version of the fighting game.
"We are aware that there are issues preventing the download of Sifu through the early access on the PlayStation Store, and are very sorry for the inconvenience," the development team explained via a tweet posted to the game's official Twitter account earlier today. "We're looking into it with PlayStation to fix it asap, and will update you on the situation very soon!"
Co-op has finally arrived in Age of Empires 3.
Players can now band together to experience "story-driven historical narratives and objectives", including all the same gameplay you know "but tailored for the cooperative experiences", as well as fully-voiced dialogue and enemy AI that can take on two opponents instead of just one.
Medicos Entertainment revealed that two new Nendoroid figures of Weather Report and Narciso Anasui from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure are currently in development. The two side characters are the fifth and sixth Stone Ocean characters to appear in Nendoroid form. They join Ermes, Foo Fighters, Jolyne, and Jotaro. There is no confirmed release date or price. Additionally, Medicos Entertainment revealed the first images of a prototype Jotaro Nendoroid.
https://twitter.com/medicos_et_j/status/1490129867144196096?s=20&t=6pZ1fwzRTxcARi103T3Dzw
Much like Ermes and Foo Fighters before them, the Weather Report and Anasui Nendoroid figures will be based on the two characters' default appearances in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Stone Ocean. As the illustrations are basic designs, there will likely be other bonus parts included in the final product. The recently revealed Jolyne Nendoroid, for example, comes with a miniature mouse version of herself. Furthermore, Jolyne comes with additional hand parts that recreate her Stone Free stand ability, as well as optional face plates.
Square Enix released a new trailer of its brand new mobile JRPG Bravely Default Brilliant Lights.
The trailer shows gameplay and cutscenes, on top of presenting some of the main characters of the game.
You can check it out below.
On top of the trailer, we learn via the game’s official Twitter account that it has been rather successful following its launch in Japan.
Apparently, it has already passed three million players.
Nintendo has released the trailer of a new series of short videos titled “Sweet Winter with Pokemon,” and it’s adorable.
The video series will be released starting from early February on the official YouTube channel of the franchise and it’s described as “depicting the warm and delicious everyday life of a man who loves cooking and Pokemon.”
You can see the video below.
If you know me, you’re likely aware that I am not the biggest Pokemon fan, but even I cannot resist the extreme cuteness of this video. It’s just off the charts and it also made me hungry.
For more Pokemon news, you can take a look at the Slowpoke-flavored attractions of Kagawa Prefecture in Japan, which just revealed a ferry ship, buses, and even hotel rooms inspired by the sleepiest of Pokemon.
After what feels like an eternity, the well-known Japanese figure exhibition Wonder Festival was back in presence today at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, near Tokyo with the 2022 Winter edition.
While it was smaller than pre-covid exhibitions for obvious reasons and some big players weren’t there, there were still plenty of new figures portraying video game characters revealed for the fans.
You can find all the pictures below, courtesy of AmiAmi, Nidy-2D-, spiritale, Union Creative, Mimeyoi, and QuesQ.
As usual, some are painted prototypes, some are unpainted “grey” prototypes, and some are announcements limited to an illustration.
Most will become available for pre-orders in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll definitely do our best to keep you posted on when they do.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to be on the show floor next time, if the Japanese borders reopen in time, but without further ado, here are the goods!
Games that change your entire outlook on a genre are important. Despite liking a few dungeon-crawlers and roguelikes over the years, I’ve never considered myself a fan of the genre. I rarely pick up games in which that’s the main selling point. And yet, Asobism’s Vivid Knight has me rethinking those past decisions. With a rather simple premise, Vivid Knight tasks you with making your way through multi-floor dungeons to collect gems and defeat the boss. Like I said, Vivid Knight is simple until you really consider its gameplay mechanics.
That simplicity is one of Vivid Knights strongest points. The combat system is neither varied nor complicated. You set your party members and when skills are off cooldown, you make your avatar set up a shield, randomly attack or cast a buff. Party members cycle through their skills automatically until the battle is done. That’s really it. Well, sort of.
Every dungeon gives you 30 crystals as a first-time completion bonus, and it’s possible to find more crystals within dungeons and their treasure levels. After clearing a dungeon, you’re pushed back to the home screen to either spend crystals on Kingdom Grimoires, which function as a sort of gacha system, or to start a “new game.” New games are just new dungeons. From there, you head right back into the action.
Today third-party developers had updates to share about upcoming aircraft add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
We start with IndiaFoxtEcho, which provided an extensive roadmap for its upcoming products. We get the announcement of a Eurofighter Typhoon.
An F-14D is also in the works, but for now the possibility of its release is not confirmed as IndiaFoxtEcho is using it as an experimental platform for technology.
Other aircraft like TA-4 / A-4 Skyhawk, E-2C Hawkeye, and C-27J Spartan are being considered.
Last, but not least, we get an update on the Sukhoi SU-31 and Aermacchi M-346 Master, which should be released in March and “no sooner than April.”
SUKHOI SU-31 This project took a lot longer than we expected, but it is on short final. We are not super-happy with the flight model – although it should be OK for most players, it is definitely not good enough for any kind of serious training.
We will try to polish it more – possibly with the help of real world pilots. We will provide more information soon.
Expected release date:
MARCH 2022AERMACCHI M-346 We have been working hard on 3D model details and new textures as we felt that our P3D assets were inadequate for MSFS.
We are still struggling with some details and complex animations, and there is some work to be done on the flight model and on the avionics, but we are quite happy with the results so far.
Expected release date: NOT SOONER THAN APRIL 2022
On February 2, local police were dispatched in response to an attempted bank robbery in DeLand, Florida. According to witnesses on the scene, the man entered the bank wearing a Sonic the Hedgehog mask and wielding a large hammer.
Sifu is out today for folks who pre-ordered the game’s Digital Deluxe Edition, which comes with a few bonuses including 48-hour early access. However, loads of people on PlayStation have reported issues with downloading and installing the early access version of the game, prompting devs SloClap to issue updates about…
During the Chaldea Satellite Station stream on February 6, 2022, Lasengle revealed some information on the upcoming Valentine’s Day event in Fate/Grand Order. Namely, that Bazett will appear in the Japanese version of the game as the event SSR. She will appear under the name Manannán mac Lir as part of the Alter Ego class.
She will not be the free event Servant due to her being a 5-star. You will need to pull for Bazett from the Fate/Grand Order banner. This is the second year in a row that the Valentine’s Day Servant bears the same design as a previous Type-Moon character. In 2021, the Japanese server debuted Amor as the SSR event Servant. In Amor’s case, she takes on the appearance of Caren from Fate/hollow ataraxia. As a side note, Bazett also appeared a main character in Fate/hollow ataraxia.
The Valentine’s 2022 event in Fate/Grand Order will start on February 9, 2022. Its official title is “Manannán Souvenir Valentine: The Chocolate Tree and the Goddess’s Choice.” In order to access it, players will need to have finished the Fuyuki Singularity first. Like previous Valentine’s events, you can obtain chocolate to give to your Servants. After receiving the chocolate, you can watch a fully-voiced scene in which they react to your gift.
While some publishers like Ubisoft push right ahead with NFTs, regardless of how their own workers feel about it, and others like EA are prepared to half-ass their way through the fad, one video game marketplace has issued one of the most welcome statements I’ve seen from within the industry.
I can’t skate. At this point. I’ll never be able to do it. But, I can (and do) play skateboarding video games. They let me live out my skater punk fantasies without breaking any bones. And soon, I’ll have a new game to scratch that skateboard itch when OlliOlli World drops in on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC later…
For those who were looking forward to check out the early access launch of Sloclap’s new martial arts game Sifu on PlayStation this past weekend, you might’ve encountered some issues on the storefront where it was virtually impossible to download the game or even launch it. Since then, the developers have stated on Twitter that they were actively working with Sony to resolve the issues as soon as possible.
As of five hours ago at the time of writing, Sloclap has announced that the issues have seemingly been resolved. They suggest redownloading the game, launching it from the games library, and trying to restore the license if anyone is still having trouble with it.
In addition to that, Sloclap also mentions that they’ll have an exclusive gift to share with Deluxe Edition buyers soon as a sign of good faith since they were the ones who have had to deal with the early access issues. Sifu is now available on PC and PlayStation.
Josh Wardle’s innovative little word game, Wordle, has taken the world by storm in the past couple of months. The game has since been acquired by the New York Times, and with the game’s code being so open, developers have been able to create their own spinoffs and variations of it as well. If you’ve only just gotten into Wordle and wish you could try your hand at some of the game’s previously released puzzles, you’re in luck.
Developer Devang Thakkar has just released Wordle Archive, which lets you play all 200+ daily puzzles that have already been released. Part of Wordle’s appeal is that you only get one word a day before having to wait 24 hours for the next one, but this is pretty much perfect for those who want to keep playing (almost) non-stop.
You’ll be able to check out the older puzzles until you’re all caught up, and you’ll never have to worry about missing a day. Though your streak will likely take a hit.
The post Wordle Archive Lets You Play All Previously Released Puzzles at Your Own Leisure appeared first on Twinfinite.
Dying Light 2 appears to be off to a strong start, as it has already shambled its way onto Steam's top 25 most-played games of all time with a peak concurrent player count of 274,983.
According to SteamDB, Dying Light 2 - which has greatly outperformed the original Dying Light's all-time peak of 45,876 players - has passed both KHOLAT and Halo Infinite to place 23rd on the list of Steam's most-played games of all time by concurrent players, and it sits behind The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
For comparison, PUBG: Battlegrounds is holding strong onto the #1 spot with an all-time peak of 3,257,248 players. In a distant second sits Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with 1,308,963 players. Additionally, the original Dying Light had an all-time peak of 45,876.
In most cases, the launch of a game will see the highest concurrent player count. However, in the age of live-service games and expansions and more, sometimes games can find a second chance at moving up the list.
In our Dying Light 2 review, we said that it "is an ambitious zombie action adventure that's packed with top-notch parkour, an awesome open world, and every painful bug in the book."
