November 2022

According to a Bloomberg report, video game publisher Embracer has shut down Onoma, the studio formerly known as Square Enix Montreal, just months after its acquisition. Some staff will be transferred to Eidos Montreal, another studio owned by Embracer. This news comes just a few weeks after Onoma underwent a rebranding process where it adopted the new name.

Onoma was best known for its work on the Go series, turn-based spin-offs of popular Eidos Interactive titles designed for mobile. This includes Hitman Go, Lara Croft Go, and Deus Ex Go. Their most recent work was Tomb Raider Reloaded, which came to mobile devices earlier this year, and their future plans involved a title based on Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Infinity Ward
Release: October 28, 2022
Rating: Mature

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is a very unpleasant game. Like every Call of Duty game, the majority of time spent playing involves either killing or being killed in horrendous ways, for one thing, and there’s a natural revulsion that comes from seeing so many gouts of blood shooting from bodies or the ragged slump of newly lifeless human corpses piled up in a doorway. And yet, the surface-level hideousness of its parade of death might not be so notably ugly if it wasn't for Modern Warfare II's cast of characters and the way they – drawn from international special forces, a private military company’s contractors, and a Mexican cartel – view the world.

French streamer Superzouloux has created a Yu-Gi-Oh 3D battle arena within his very own home. Footage of the arena was shared on Twitter by Jake Lucky. This included a clip demonstrating how the arena works. The footage shows 3D models appearing on camera once a card has been played, similar to how it does in games like Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. However, it doesn't stop there.

Superzouloux also programmed cameras to switch perspectives once the card has been played. This has created an entirely hands-free experience for the streamer, which is demonstrated in the footage. In an extended YouTube video he reveals that he was working on this project for roughly 7 months behind the scenes. He breaks down he process of creating this system. This includes the effort that went into making the 3D models for the cards and the creation of special electronic parts.

You can watch footage of Superzouloux's Yu-Gi-Oh 3D battle arena below. It video does feature subtitles, so viewers can read about his process in creating the fully functional arena while watching the clip.

[embed]https://twitter.com/JakeSucky/status/1587108409475620867[/embed]

DMM Games announced a closed beta test for its upcoming PC and smartphone game Blue Reflection Sun. A total of 3,000 beta testers will be chosen, with 1,500 testers each for iOS and Android platforms. Beta testing will not occur for the PC version of the game. The closed beta test will take place from December 2-9, 2022 in Japan.

Those who wish to participate in the Blue Reflection Sun beta test must fill out an application. Applications are open now and will remain open until November 24, 2022. Testers will be selected through a lottery system, and the winners will be announced on November 30, 2022.

First announced in March 2021, Blue Reflection Sun is a part of the Blue Reflection cross-media project. Other parts of the Blue Reflection project include the Blue Reflection: Second Light console game and Blue Reflection Ray animated series. The mobile game is being developed by Gust, best known for the Atelier series, and published by Koei Tecmo Games.

A teaser trailer for the game was also uploaded by DMM Games.

North American media news outlet Anime News Network announced Kadokawa will acquire its media business. The news came directly from the website, which featured a statement from both the President of Anime News Network (or ANN) Christopher Macdonald and President of Kadokawa Takeshi Natsuno. The acquisition will finalize sometime by the end of 2023. An amount was not disclosed in the statement.

Both parties express excitement regarding the acquisition, with Macdonald stating that "all of ANN's staff remain entirely dedicated to the standards of professional, exhaustive, and editorially independent journalism that ANN is already known for and we believe that Kadokawa's resources will be a great benefit to ANN's journalism and our readers."

Any potential immediate changes to Anime News Network were not mentioned in the announcement. Only that Kadokawa believes that the acquisition will "strengthen" Kadokawa's marketing efforts and presence within the North American region. Additionally, Kadokawa also noted that this is an opportunity for Anime News Network to also extend its reach. And to also highlight it's content and community.

Anime News Network was founded in 1998. It quickly rose to prominence as one of the outlets providing coverage of Japanese-based media. This has included visual novels, anime, and manga. As mentioned by Macdonald, Anime News Network will continue to be dedicated to independent journalism despite the acquisition of its media business.

Game history blog Gaming Alexandria shared details and gameplay footage of The Sacred Pools, a 1996 "erotic thriller" by Sega that was never released. Dylan Mansfield penned a deep dive into the history of the game and its ties to the decline of FMV games in the 1990s.

Sega originally planned to release The Sacred Pools in 1997. SegaSoft aimed to publish games for both PC and Sega Saturn, as well as target older audiences. The game first debuted at E3 1996, where it faced a largely negative reaction from the press and onlookers. By the late 1990s, most avid games media and game enthusiasts soured on the prospects of FMV games. The critical drubbing and instability at SegaSoft itself (by 1997 the division would be restructured to focus on online games and the PC market) led Sega to quietly shelve The Sacred Pools. 

That would've been the end of it, with the game remembered only through brief articles in gaming magazines of the time. However, in May 2022 Gaming Alexandria connected with Joe Cain, a former Sega game tester. Cain put them in contact with David Gray, who had worked as an associate producer on The Sacred Pools and happened to own several CD-ROMs with the game data on them. Gray got the discs, which contained alpha builds for the Sega Saturn, Windows PC, Mac, and PlayStation versions of the game as a parting gift in SegaSoft's waning days. (The division was disbanded in 2000.) Twenty years later, the game was finally copied to digital storage and made available via emulation.

Capcom shared a Resident Evil Village Gold Edition and The Winters' Expansion survey. The survey itself, while relatively short, will provide participants with a special wallpaper upon competition. Questions in it include gauging interest in the release of a new Resident Evil title and if consumers would purchase an entirely new console to play it. However, a specific Resident Evil game was not mentioned outright.

Additionally, the Resident Evil Village Gold Edition and The Winters' Expansion survey asks participants about their history with the series. This includes how many games within the franchise they have played.

With the release of Resident Evil Village Gold Edition, several new features have appeared in the game. These include a new "third person" mode, which does exactly as described. Players can now play Resident Evil Village in third-person via it, allowing them to explore the various set pieces in the game in an entirely new way. Alongside the release of Gold Edition, The Winters' Expansion adds a new DLC scenario, Shadow of Rose, which stars Rose Winters.

Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil Gold Edition are available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Owners of Resident Evil Village can purchase the Winters’ Expansion DLC separately. A demo for Resident Evil Gold Edition is readily available.

Earlier today, the Marvel Entertainment YouTube channel was hard at work yet again getting MCU fans hyped up for the final movie of phase four. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is coming to theaters in 10 days, so they’re just about in the homestretch now. Today, a new featurette about Namor was dropped along with a new trailer for the film.

In the featurette, director Ryan Coogler talks about the introduction of Namor and the nation of Talokan that he rules over.

Producer Nate Moore also talked about how Namor was one of the very first Marvel comic book heroes. While Moore calls him a hero here, he always was more of a shade of gray which seems to be the role he’s playing here in Wakanda Forever.

The next member of the team we hear from in this featurette is Namor himself, Tenoch Huerta Mejía. Mejía talked about how Namor’s love for his people makes him a good ruler of Talokan. He also mentioned how important Talokan was to him in this story since it represents his Mexican culture with dignity and respect.

Last but not least, Letitia Wright talks about how even though Wakanda and Talokan are on different ends of the conflict in the film, they both essentially want the same thing. Everyone just wants to protect and preserve their people. The full Namor featurette can be found down below.

It’s only been a little over five months since Embracer Group purchased several studios from Square Enix, including Square Enix Montreal, the studio behind hits like Hitman Go and Lara Croft Go. The studio had since rebranded to Onoma as of last month. However, things have taken a turn for the worse.

CDE Entertainment, the group Embracer created to handle the Square Enix properties, has announced today that Onoma has been closed, and the focus will instead shift entirely to Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montreal. While studio closures are never good, Onoma was a mobile-based studio, and despite the draw of Hitman Go and the like, it makes sense that it would be less lucrative than something created by those other two developers.

While this closure is said to affect around 200 people, “CDE has said it will look to match some of them with open positions within PC and console projects at the remainder of the company.” Considering the talent seen in the games Onoma created, it can only be a good thing to have those same developers making the next Tomb Raider or the next Deus Ex title.

CDE Entertainment director Phil Rogers had this to say:

Modern Warfare 2’s weapon collection has many locked items that players won’t be able to use in the game’s early stages. The only way to obtain these exclusive weapons and equipment is by leveling up in Rank Progression or Weapon Progression. In this guide, we’ll show you how to unlock the TAQ-56 to expand the list of guns in the Assault Rifle category.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the most ambitious entry to date, bringing unprecedented levels of customization to your platform of choice. One of the newest features is the reinvention of 2019’s Gunsmith, allowing weapons to share attachments as long as their base forms are unlocked. We’re going to be looking at one of the game’s earliest and most iconic weapons, the M4 Assault Rifle, and breaking down how the M4 works in the new Gunsmith system in Modern Warfare 2.

At the end of 2020, executive producer Mark Darrah announced he was leaving Bioware after 23 years. Today, the former developer shared some insight regarding his time at the company during a Q&A on his official Youtube channel to celebrate 10k subscribers. And while there were plenty of great questions and answers, arguably the interesting one was about Mass Effect Andromeda.

During the livestream, a user asked whether Alec Ryder would have made a better protagonist, as the Ryder twins felt childish and less serious. Darrah responded to that question with the following:

I don’t think Alec being the protagonist would be better. I did provide feedback on Andromeda that I felt like this feels like a CW show and was told ‘that’s on purpose.’

I’ve actually thought about this more since then and I think Shepard is the protagonist of an action movie from the 80s and 90s. Ryder is a protagonist from the 2000s. So there is essentially an intentional moving with the audience to some degree.

I don’t think this is the biggest problem with the story in Andromeda. They could have told a refugee story; they could have told a story about colonialsm. Instead they chose to tell a story in the middle of that, that isn’t the interesting version of the story.

I gave the feedback that the protagonist was very young, in a ‘I don’t want to do this’ way, but that was on purpose.

Anyone interested in watching the full Q&A can head over to the link, with the question about Mass Effect Andromeda being embedded at the 1:57:00 mark for your convenience.

Today Electronic Arts released its financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2023, related to the period between July 1 and September 30, 2022.

You can find a summary of the publisher’s financial performance in the table below.

The results were defined “solid” but revenue was slightly down year-on-year. Yet, that’s mostly due to the fact that F1 2022 launched in Q1 this year while it did in Q2 last year. Live services took the lion’s share of total revenue as usual.

At this point, we have extensively covered the best opening in the Chainsaw Man anime. Considering when we last reported on it, the opening had amassed 22 million views, it’s likely you’ve already seen it at least as much as we have. This time we aren’t gushing about the opening, though, but something just as special.

The anime’s ending Tablet by TOOBOE is both an excellent song and a wonderful showcase of why Power is the best girl in all of anime. Yes, that’s right, all of anime. I’m willing to fight for that opinion, too. The almost stop-motion aspect of the video is entirely enthralling and it’s guaranteed to match the numbers of the original. At the time of writing it’s achieved 446,000 views in the last four hours, further proving what a phenomenon Chainsaw Man has become.

You can see it for yourself below, as many times as you might want.

If you’re a regular manga reader and are looking for the next series to start, we might have just the thing. The new series by Midnight Occult Civil Servants mangaka Tamotsu Youko has now started through Comic Newtype.

If you’ve never heard of Midnight Occult Civil Servants, it has an anime adaptation that you can watch through Crunchyroll that the service summarizes as:

When Miyako Arata joins the Shinjuku Ward Office, he thinks he’s gotten a normal civil servant job. But it turns out he’s joined the Night Community Exchange Department, one of which operates secretly in each of Tokyo’s twenty-three ward offices.

As for the new series, its Japanese title is “Mahoutsukai no hanzai sousa” and Google translates that as “Wizard’s Criminal Investigation”. It is a series involving a wizard/magician wrongfully accused of murder, so he enlists the detective who arrested him in the first place. Comic Newtype summarizes it (translated, of course) as:

Earl Eugene was arrested for murdering his entire family.
He wants to meet with Kevin, the detective who caught him.
“I didn’t kill [them]. I want you to catch the real culprit with me.”

The first chapter is available in Japanese, though we have no idea when it might receive an English translation.

Dune: Spice Wars publishers Shiro Games and Funcom announced today that the 4X strategy title will be coming to PC Game Pass.

The upcoming new addition to the Game Pass catalog was revealed at Paris Games Week 2022, via the Xbox Wire, though no date for its release was announced. The only details given were that it is an “imminent arrival” and will be “available soon.”

Dune: Spice Wars is a strategy game set in Frank Herbert’s Dune universe where players chooses among different factions to seize control over the valuable resource spice and war with the other factions to do so. Each faction, such as House Corrino, Smugglers, or Fremen, has bonuses that affect different aspects from building armies to diplomacy.

Our impressions of Dune: Spice Wars when it first released in Steam Early Access were positive, calling it “a really solid power fantasy experience that will satisfy your god game needs.”

The game was first announced late last year at The Game Awards 2021, and entered Steam Early Access in April. Dune: Spice Wars will also receive a major update alongside the PC Game Pass release that promises “new features, units, and more,” and is still scheduled to officially launch sometime in 2023.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 players have lost the ability to play the game via Steam's Family Sharing feature, just days after release. The feature was switched off in an update deployed yesterday without warning or communication from Activision.

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The developers of Hitman Go, Lara Croft Go and Deus Ex Go are shutting down. Onoma, previously known as Square Enix Montreal, were acquired by Embracer in August alongside Square Enix's other western development studios. Some staff will be transferred to another acquired studio, Eidos Montreal, sources told Bloomberg (registration required).

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Embracer Group is closing its down Square Enix Montréal studio - which it purchased as part of a $300m USD deal with Square Enix back in May - just weeks after rebranding it Studio Onoma.

In its Square Enix Montréal guise, Onama was a predominantly mobile-focused developer, perhaps best known for its Go series of puzzles games. It was working on Tomb Raider Reloaded, Avatar Generations, and a new Space Invaders game when it was acquired by Embracer Group alongside Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montréal in May.

As reported by Bloomberg, however, Embracer Group today informed staff it will be closing the studio in a move the company says will affect around 200 employees. Bloomberg's sources claim some members of the Onama team will be transferred to Eidos-Montréal, although it's unclear how many employees will be left without jobs following today's news.

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Embracer Group is hitting both gamers and its developers with a one-two punch today with the announcement that it is shutting down Onoma.

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Today, during Electronic Arts’ quarterly financial conference call for analysts and investors, chief executive officer Andrew Wilson and chief operating officer Laura Miele talked about upcoming games.

Wilson mentioned that the unannounced “Major IP” game coming in Q4 (between January and March) is one that EA feels “really, really good” about, but they’re not ready to announce it just yet as the marketing and development teams are deciding the appropriate timing for the reveal.

Miele talked about licensed IPs in regard to the new announcement about the deal with Marvel.

She mentioned that Electronic Arts looks at the potential expansion of its community among other things when deciding what games to make. Licensed IPs are a component of expanding and diversifying the community, and casting the net wider.

The Star Wars deal built millions of players into EA’s community and the publisher realized that over 40% of those players have gone on to play other EA games.

Due to that, Electronic Arts sees adding licensed IPs to its portfolio as a “significant engagement model” for its community as it grows.

As a result, the publisher is “incredibly confident” that it’ll build “meaningful content” for its fans within the Marvel deal.

Look, everyone needs a flash drive. These things used to be the new hotness, back before email and cloud storage made them a bit irrelevant, but it's still jolly useful to have one on hand to install (or recover) an OS, play (legally) downloaded videos on your TV or just bring your presentation in without worrying about something going wrong.

So: the SanDisk 32GB Ultra Flair flash drive is down to £5 on Amazon after a ~40% discount. If you've not got a good, fast USB drive, then why not pick this one up while it's on sale?

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Streaming service Netflix have acquired Spry Fox, the developers of Alphabear and Cozy Grove. Spry Fox say that all their existing games will remain available on their current platforms and the studio are continuing to work on Cozy Grove 2 and "a larger, non-violent MMO."

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Wanna know something cool? You can pick up Intel's cheapest 12th-gen Core processor for £105 after a discount at CCL, with the Core i3 12100F offering incredible performance for this kind of money.

It's able to outmatch some classic great value gaming CPUs, like the Ryzen 5 3600X and Core i5 11400F, and even comes close to the powerful (and more expensive) Core i5 11600K. All this with PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 support, given the right motherboard - and this is a surprisingly great way to jump on 12th-gen, while leaving plenty of space to upgrade to a higher tier CPU down the road.

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Hideo Kojima continues to tease his next project. This time it's with a new image showing actress Shioli Kutsuna with the words "Where am I?" written over it. It comes a month after a previous tease which confirmed the actress Elle Fanning was involved.

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As I have discussed on this site many, many times, I do not like horror games, and so struggle to enjoy even the genre’s finest examples. There is absolutely no way in hell, then, I should be enjoying Signalis as much as I am.

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