February 2023

The Electronic Wireless Show podcast returns in 2023 with a new friend and a new format. We ran out of themes, so we're going to flip to a magazine-ish show, where we discuss some current events as well as the games we've been playing. This week we talk about games on film, with everyone bloody loving The Last Of Us TV show and reports that Lara Croft will be hitting the small screen too. We also discuss the reasons a developer might have to come out and clarify that their game is, in fact, real. Plus: "try cutting off their limbs"; what is Forspoken, and why so graphics?

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Insomniac Games' take on Wolverine could reportedly launch as early as next autumn, with the studio said to be aiming for a "hard R" tone.

Word on Insomniac's PS5-exclusive Wolverine title - which was described as being "very early in development" when it was teased back in September 2021 - comes via the ever-leaky Jeff Grubb, speaking during a recent Giant Bomb livestream (thanks VGC).

According to Grubb, two potential Wolverine launch windows have been surfaced by his sources; the game could possibly arrive as early as a year after Insomniac's highly anticipated Spider-Man 2, which is currently expected to launch this autumn, but the studio is also said to be "still very much talking about 2025" internally. "But if anyone can pull off releasing two major, triple-A, massive games in back-to-back years," Grubb added, "it is Insomniac."

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More than two years on from the PS5's release, Sony's new DualSense Edge controller offers a premium upgrade over the gamepad bundled with the console - and a rival to Microsoft's Xbox Elite controller. It's a competition-focused pro gamepad with back paddles, fully remappable buttons, adjustable triggers and swappable parts. The Edge costs a steep £210/$200 at launch - so is it worth the premium? And how does it compare to third-party alternatives - not to mention the Xbox Elite controller? Let's find out.

First, let's give the original DualSense its dues. The £60/$70 controller got off to a flying start, with the bundled Astro's Playroom game showcasing its features beautifully at launch - from adaptive triggers and haptic feedback to a speaker, gyrometer and accelerometer. Other titles like Returnal and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart make great use of the hardware features too, but there's also much more basic implementations - like in Call of Duty, where the trigger resistance is more a barrier to the action than an immersive revolution.

Despite this mixed success in using its more advanced features, the DualSense is also an ergonomically superior controller to its predecessors - and that carries over to the DualSense Edge too.

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A fresh development titbit from Dragon Age Inquisition studio BioWare has revealed the game's ability to make your horse "sprint" was in fact just an illusion.

Indeed, the game simply "added speed lines and changed the camera so it felt faster", BioWare veteran John Epler has revealed.

Epler, now creative director on the upcoming Dragon Age Dreadwolf, was responding via Twitter to a thread of little-known development facts, stunning fans.

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Valorant has pushed the boundaries of in-game cosmetics by producing some of the most elaborate and impressive weapon skins ever seen in an FPS. To produce so many skins all the time, Riot Games In a recent interview conducted by Twinfinite, VFX artist Nicolas Ceriani explained just what a well-oiled machine the development team working on Valorant skins at Riot Games is.

When asked about how designs are conceptualized, and how many new Valorant skins are being made at any one time, here’s what he said:

“…there are a ton of skins being worked on at the same time, all at different stages. While an animator is giving life to Skin A, a Sound Designer is working on Skin B, and a VFX Artist is perfecting performances on Skin C. It’s also not uncommon to jump between a few tasks on different skinlines depending on priorities. When it comes to brainstorming phases, we have pitch sessions where we bring the team together to explore a bunch of ideas, form teams, and push some concepts a bit.“

As we’ve cited in another recent article, Ceriani also explained that the team has “playtest sessions every week fully dedicated to testing new skins.” Although he was tight-lipped when it came to the actual details of any new Valorant skin bundle designs, he left the door open to more of the sequel bundles we’ve seen so much of recently, such as the Reaver and Ion 2.0:

“There are skins that we love, players love and meet these criteria, so when the stars align like this, sure, why not? Obviously, I cannot disclose any details on what we’re working on, but we’ve already done it a couple of times already, so we could do it again in the future.“

The Wild Hearts release date is not far off, which means the juicy details are finally being revealed. The game’s Executive Producer, Lewis Harvey, took to Reddit for an AMA about all things Wild Hearts. In between all the questions about the Kemono creatures, Harvey answered a question all about what sort of monetization players can expect.

Reddit user Grand_Fun8174 asked, “I suppose one of the biggest questions outta the gate is what should we expect for the game’s monetization? Will there be microtransactions? If so what kind of items will be for sale?” As things have been faltering recently regarding live-service games, this is a reasonable concern.

Lewis Harvey took this opportunity to reveal that “all post-launch content will be free, including new Kemono and more! We don’t have any plans to feature MTX.” This certainly means big things ahead for Wild Hearts, as it suggests EA is confident that the game will be a huge hit.

Considering that EA is positioning Wild Hearts as the ultimate Monster Hunter killer, going this route only makes sense. Main competitor Monster Hunter Rise has sold weapon packs and an expansion, so announcing that Wild Hearts to give content away at no extra cost is a bold move to steal focus.

Every day, I am begging the straights to be normal about men who kiss each other. The latest episode of The Last of Us seems to have caused many of them to lose their goddamn minds. The cause of their mass dissatisfaction? Two men having a loving relationship on an HBO show. As of the time of writing, one fourth of…

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Only one person was on shift at the GameStop in Easton, PA when two men tried to rob it last month. Outnumbered and told to put his hands up, a newer employee backed off as the thieves unloaded $5,000 worth of PlayStation 5s from the back room. A week later, GameStop allegedly fired the 13-year veteran manager of the…

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For years, Lego and Nintendo fans alike have dreamed of a Legend of Zelda-themed set being released. And for years that seemed unlikely to ever happen, until Lego and Nintendo started working together on Mario sets and people wondered if maybe, just maybe, Zelda was next. Now, after last year’s evidence that such a…

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As part of this month's cover story, we sat with Art Director Hirofumi Nakaoka to learn how Capcom designs old and new enemies in Resident Evil 4 (Remake). You'll learn about scrapped redesigns for the iconic chainsaw villager, how normalcy breeds horror, and how Nakaoka and the team created a new cow-headed, hammer-wielding villager referred to as The Brute. And folks looking for new Resident Evil 4 gameplay have some new footage to dissect in this video interview. 

Be sure to subscribe to the Game Informer YouTube channel if you enjoy watching this interview, as we'll publish additional videos in the coming days and weeks. Check out our Resident Evil 4 (Remake) coverage hub, which contains every post related to this month's cover story. 

Disclaimer: Capcom helped to arrange and cover travel accommodations for two in Osaka, Japan, in association with this cover story. As the world’s largest video game magazine, Game Informer’s editorial team is proud to remain impartial, professional, and committed to the truth in all forms of our content, regardless of any outside factors.

Alfred is one of the first characters you meet in Fire Emblem Engage and, well, the first time I met him I wasn’t impressed! He didn’t seem like a bad kid, to be fair. He just seemed so overly enthusiastic. He, like the twins Clanne and Framme, emphasized how he kept visiting. He seemed overly desperate in some ways, both with regards to activities and relationships. However, it’s only after completing certain Fire Emblem Engage support conversation lines and beating the game that I realized just how good Alfred secretly is.

Editor’s Note: There will be Fire Emblem Engage spoilers for Alfred and other characters below.

More video game shirts are heading to Uniqlo, courtesy of a Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) collection. In early March 2023, five will appear. All of them are tied to games like Katamari Damacy and SimCity, while still referencing the museum. Each one will cost $19.90. [Thanks, Keita Takahashi!]

Here’s the full list of video game MoMA Uniqlo shirts that will be available. Each one will be available in sizes XXS through XXXL. They are all going to be 100% cotton. Not to mention all five are unisex designs.

Co-op zombie smasher Back 4 Blood won't be getting any new content. Developers Turtle Rock say that River Of Blood, the expansion which launched in December 2022, was it's last as they're now working on a new game.

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Some of my favourite games involve visiting a fantastical town, befriending the residents, discovering their stories, and trading with them. Too often those same games also have too-difficult turn-based murderfests in-between, though. Here comes Townseek to fix that. It's an adorable and "relaxing" exploration-trading game in which you pilot an airship, customise your balloon, and visit eg. some sort of bee kingdom, as per the screenshot above.

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Dwarf Fortress selling half a million copies on Steam in just a few weeks already indicated that its creators, the Adams brothers, were due a windfall. Now the latest earnings report from Bay 12 Games is here to put an exact dollar figure on that success. Here's a tease: revenue in January was up over 462x since December.

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It's great that games are now regularly updated post-release, but it's also common for me to long for those halcyon days when I first fell in love with a game. It's good news then that Deep Rock Galactic is celebrating its fifth anniversary by making it possible to play it exactly as it was at release in early 2018.

Of course, that's just one way they're celebrating the milestone, alongside an anniversary event and new DLC.

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It's a new month, which means there's a new wave of games to join and leave Game Pass. As of today, we know of a new set of leavers, and it includes head-turning action platformer Skul: The Hero Slayer and the wonderfully destructive Besiege.

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If there’s one game that’s had a rough go in the past few years, it’s The Day Before. Since its reveal, Fntastic’s zombie MMO survival title saw a rise to the top of the Steam wishlist charts, to an infinite cycle of delays, and then on the receiving end of a barrage of fan questioning as to whether or not it’s a real game. 

It seems like Fntastic has heard the criticism or realized the questioning was starting to mount and has risen from the hordes with a brand new gameplay trailer featuring crafting and zombie survival. 

In a 10-minute trailer, the player starts with a brisk run through the suburbs before hitting up a crafting station. From there, fans get a look at The Day Before’s modest selection of crafting as the player combines a few items to make parts for their Deprov-74, with the final product boasting a suppressor and ACOG sight for some zombie slaying.

The latest Title Update for FIFA 23 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC has arrived courtesy of EA Sports, and there are a handful of gameplay tweaks to sift through — including one big one — as well as a couple of fixes that were often requested by the FIFA community.

For starters, FUT has addressed the bug that kept causing Transfer Market search filters to reset after every search regardless of whether or not the player reset them. While this didn’t seem to be an issue on the Companion App, the same couldn’t be said for the platforms themselves.

Staying in the Transfer Market, incorrect player item displays were fixed as well.

Valentine’s day, the corporate holiday of love, has a lot of folks fiending to get with the person they adore. However, oftentimes cupid’s arrow happens to land on people who just make each other worse (and not in the fun kinky way). No medium serves up a hearty helping of such toxic couples quite like anime.

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2016 was T-Pain’s Twitch channel’s inaugural year, and it’s also the first time Pain remembers getting trolled. “At the time, my music career was kind of on a downward spiral,” he says during our Zoom call this Monday. “People were coming into my chat and telling me stuff like, ‘You’re only streaming because you don’t…

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Developer Fntastic has shared a 10-minute gameplay trailer for its now twice-delayed open-world zombie survival MMO The Day Before.

Fntastic announced The Day Before back in 2021, and its striking reveal trailer helped propel it to the top of Steam's most wishlisted games chart. Since then, though, it's received two last-minute delays in rather bizarre circumstances - first, Fntastic suddenly announced it was switching development to Unreal Engine 5 a month before its initial June 2022 release date, setting launch back by a year, then at the end of January, with just two months to go before its revised launch date, the developer pulled the game's Steam listing and announced another nine-month delay, this time blaming a trademark dispute.

The extremely limited amount of footage seen of The Day Before as all that played out only helped to fuel internet speculation the game was some sort of scam - suggestions Fantastic recently rebuffed, arguing, "We didn't take a penny from people: no crowdfunding, no pre-orders, no donations. The game is fully funded by Mytona, one of the largest mobile publishers in the world, who checked the game's build at every milestone per our contract."

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Developer Turtle Rock has confirmed it won't be releasing any more new content for its co-op zombie shooter Back 4 Blood as the studio shifts its focus to its next project.

Back 4 Blood - which combines Left4Dead-style zombie slaughter with a sprinkling of deck-building to bring variety to playthroughs - launched back in October 2021 and has received a total of three paid expansions since then.

The most recent of these, River of Blood, launched in December, and is now confirmed to be the last new content releasing for the game. Turtle Rock shared the news on its website, explaining work on its next title is now underway and that the studio "doesn't have enough folks to continue working on Back 4 Blood" at the same time.

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UPDATE 02/03/23: Microsoft has told IGN that yesterday’s announcement that the Xbox 360 Marketplace would close later this year was posted in error. A spokesperson said:

“This message was posted in error and we can confirm the Xbox 360 marketplace will not close in May 2023. As a reminder, beginning on February 7, 2023, a limited set of games, add-ons, and in-game content will no longer be purchasable in select markets via the Xbox 360 Store.”

Original article continues below.

The end of an era seems to be upon us. Xbox has announced through the Xbox Support page that the Xbox 360 Marketplace will be closed down sometime within the next year. The website encourages players to purchase any Xbox 360 games and DLC by May 2023, which is presumably around the time the store will begin the closure process.

This news comes in the wake of Xbox’s announcement that about 46 games will be de-listed from the Xbox 360 Marketplace on Feb. 7. This list includes titles like Dark Souls, Left for Dead 2, Mass Effect 2, and more.

While these titles will be removed, Xbox will allow players to redownload games if they are already on their console. These moves will only pertain to purchasing games for the first time. This will also not affect the Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S Marketplaces; games that are playable on these consoles through the backward compatibility program will still be available through purchase through those respective digital storefronts.

The latest Bay 12 Games financial report has shown a stunning uptick in revenue, with January’s takings eclipsing $7 million. Under the guise of Toady One, Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams revealed the good news.

“A little less than half will go to taxes, and we’re continuing to pay people and new business expenses and such,” Adams explained in the forum post. “So it’s not all personal money, but a lot of it is, enough that we’ve solved the main issues of health/retirement that are troubling for independent people, as well as safeguarded the future of the game well enough that we felt comfortable bringing [community member turned programmer] Putnam on to work with the full code and so forth.”

The final tally for the month, $7,230,123.58, doesn’t just dwarf the previous four-month average of a little under $15,000 (if you’ll pardon the pun); it is literally over 120 times the amount of September to December combined.

The cause for this, of course, would be December’s rollout of Dwarf Fortress 1.0. The management sim has been in development in some form or another since the early 2000s, before it was announced that it would be arriving on Steam with updated graphics and quality-of-life improvements. The response to what was already a solid foundation was positive — in our review, we awarded it a score of 4.5 out of 5 — and yet few could have foreseen the kind of groundswell it has created.

Netflix’s survival drama series, Squid Game, swept the nation when it was released on the streaming service almost two years ago, focusing on the plight of 456 players looking to rid themselves of financial struggle by playing a set of deadly children’s games. The show performed exceptionally well, earning accolades left and right, and saw a renewal for a second season. 

Looking to capitalize on it even more, Netflix blew the whistle to get a reality show going, where real people would participate for a chance at winning big. Squid Game: The Challenge is currently in development, and to no one’s surprise, it turns out that being in a reality tv show based on a rigged game is not the dream many were hoping for.

As reported by Vice, it seems that many of the contestants are miserable and in the process of questioning the authenticity of this spin-off. Squid Game: The Challenge is shooting in England, with the weather less than agreeable this time of year. During the filming of “Red Light, Green Light”, contestants started to feel unwell during freezing temperatures, although many tried to push through it for a shot at the large cash prize. 

Earlier today the developer behind co-op shooter Back 4 Blood--released in 2021 on console and PC—announced that, having released multiple updates and three expansions, it was moving on. And the reaction to this was mostly negative, with players calling the game dead and suggesting the team was giving up on it. But…

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If you’re a fan of both football and video games you’ll no doubt have all kinds of fond memories of the two coming together on a team’s shirt, from Arsenal’s classic Dreamcast kit to Fiorentina’s shirts in the 90s. As iconic as those kits were, though, they were but blips on the radar compared to Nintendo’s…

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For over 30 years the Antonov An-225 Mriya was the world’s biggest airplane, a colossal vehicle that was 84 m (275 feet) long and weighed 190 tonnes, but which could still somehow not just get itself into the air, but carry loads of other stuff inside it while doing it.

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First, there was Spider-Man’s infamous Puddlegate. Then there were the not-so-watery streets of Cyberpunk 2077. Now it seems video game fans’ next watery, pre-release controversy involves the heavy rain seen in some early gameplay of the Resident Evil 4 remake. Some think it looks as bad as the awful-looking rain the GTA Trilogy remasters

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Following Bloomberg's recent claims EA had cancelled an unannounced single-player game set in the Titanfall/Apex Legends universe, reliable leaker Jeff Grubb has shared additional details, saying the project was a "Titanfall-feeling" single-player campaign that would have been included in Apex Legends rather than being a standalone title.

Grubb, who's been in a particularly leaky mood this evening, made the claims during a Giant Bomb podcast (as transcribed by VGC), saying he'd heard from sources that the cancelled project was part of a broader push to expand the scope of Apex Legends.

"In two weeks from now, Apex Legends is going to get Team Deathmatch, and that was always part of a plan to turn Apex Legends into this platform where you could get all kinds of different shooter experiences from an expanded Apex Legends/Titanfall world", Grubb explained.

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EA has revealed The Sims 4's previously teased new Infants life stage will arrive as a free update to the base game on 16th March, and it'll launch alongside the newly revealed Growing Together Expansion Pack, which aims to expand gameplay options across all life stages.

The Sims 4's new Infants life stage is intended to bridge the existing gap between newborns and toddlers, fleshing out Sims' earliest years by introducing adorable little toerags with their own personalities, needs, emotions, and sentiments.

The free update will give players the tools to create and modify infants in Create-a-Sim, and includes a broad range of clothing, accessories, and hairstyles. It'll also feature various Infant-themed interactions, including the ability to adopt Infants, change their nappies, given them a nap, put them down to sleep, and more.

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AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors offer incredible gaming and content creation performance, though high prices have stifled their adoption. Now, these CPUs - and their accompanying motherboards and RAM - are starting to become more affordable, with the high-end Ryzen 7 7700X dropping from a launch price of £440 to just £312 at Amazon UK as of today.

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Dell's S2721DGFA is one of the best 1440p gaming monitors on the market thanks to its use of an LG Fast IPS panel, blending the plus points of both TN and IPS displays. Normally this monitor costs north of £300, but today it's down to £279 at Dell UK, a great price that can be dropped further to £251 if you have a student or Dell Advantage employee account.

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People get another chance to get the Gengar and Pikachu Pokemon Squishmallow plush, this time at GameStop. The store opened pre-orders for the stuffed animals. It started accepting pre-orders for the 10” and 14” Gengar and Pikachu variants. The 10" variant is $19.99. The 14" one is $29.99. They are expected to ship on May 12, 2023. [Thanks, Wario64!]

These stuffed animals are nearly identical to the ones that appeared at the Pokemon Center. The plush debuted there in November 2022. However, there is one difference. The Pokemon Center ones feature a special patch on the bottom and have a different tag noting their origin there. Otherwise, they are the exact same characters, only with the additional 10" size.